


we are dust in the universe

by saebeok



Category: Super Junior, Super Junior-M
Genre: Coming Out, Friendship, Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Personal Growth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 28,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saebeok/pseuds/saebeok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inexplicably, helplessly, Kyuhyun finds himself increasingly drawn to Zhou Mi. Kyuhyun tries to bury it, but always his heart flares to life when he tries the hardest, like a frustratingly unsolvable equation, intractable because of a wrongly-written number that is at once trapped by, and yet defiant of, logic. </p><p>(Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi, over the span of years.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by 白安's 是什麼 讓我遇見這樣的你
> 
> This is the longest story I've ever written. It follows Kyuhyun's life over quite a number of years. I generally tried to adhere to the timeline of Super Junior's career, but you will find that things eventually deviate from there.

_是什麼 讓我遇見這樣的你?_

 

“I can’t help it,” Kyuhyun once overheard Changmin saying laughingly, teasingly, “It wasn’t like I was asking to grow taller.”

He looked up from his lunch to see Changmin seated at a table two rows down from his, being pummeled by Jaejoong as he half-heartedly tried to shield himself. Kyuhyun hadn’t noticed before but now he did - Changmin _had_ grown taller again, could perhaps even be as tall as Yunho by now.

Dong Bang Shin Ki was still a group on its ascendance at that time, and Kyuhyun’s own debut was not too long ago.

“Hyung, stop it!”

Jaejoong’s playful punches were unrelenting and as Changmin rose from his seat, his eyes met Kyuhyun’s briefly. Kyuhyun smiled back and watched as the two boys ran out of the cafeteria, Jaejoong failing to hide his laughter and Changmin loudly protesting that it was never his intention to outgrow his hyungs.

Returning his attention to the tray before him, Kyuhyun felt his spirits inexorably lifted. As jokingly as Changmin had said them, he’d felt an unexpected spark of kinship at his words. Kyuhyun didn’t miss the way Ryeowook looked enviously at him sometimes and remembered every one of Jungsu’s good-natured exhortations for him to _slow down because Siwon’s tall enough to shadow the rest of us already_.

 _I can’t help it either_ , Kyuhyun thought to himself. These were words shared between one maknae and another; he smiled as he left for vocals practice.

It was then that he had the feeling that they could – would – become good friends.

 

\--

 

Kyuhyun’s first meeting with Zhou Mi also took place in the cafeteria - an event determined less by coincidence and more by the fact that everybody practically lived in the SM building.

When he first saw Zhou Mi, he was sitting at a table, a single figure amid the other trainees who were clustered in their boisterous, chattering friend-groups. _How lonely it must feel_ , the unbidden thought came to Kyuhyun’s mind.

(“He’s from China,” Heechul had let on the news just two days ago, “but hopefully his Korean’s better than Hankyung’s when he first came here… Yah! Don’t grumble like that, you know it’s true!”)

Kyuhyun was never one for talking to strangers, much less comforting them, but some strange instinct compelled him to set his tray down across from the new boy.  “Can I sit here?”

The new boy nodded, his eyes earnest and a little hesitant, but unafraid. Kyuhyun admired that about him.

“My name is Zhou Mi,” he said.

“Cho Kyuhyun.”

They lapsed into the permeating silence of two people who didn’t have much to say to each other nor the words with which to do so. Kyuhyun shoveled a spoonful of rice into his mouth, watching Zhou Mi pick at the kimchi on his own tray. He thought of Heechul and Hankyung, drawing up the image of their frequent beer nights in his mind: the surreptitiously bought cans of cheap alcohol and dishes of snacks laid out on a small table, and the sound of occasional sentences and unrestrained laughter emanating from their room...

He was unabashedly an introvert and disliked straining himself to make small talk, but Kyuhyun wanted to take away the slump of loneliness that sat in Zhou Mi’s shoulders, damned language barriers aside. So he picked up a piece of his tonkatsu and held it out to Zhou Mi with his chopsticks.

“Here.”

Zhou Mi looked surprised, but a look of understanding quickly came over his face as he smiled and leaned forward to take Kyuhyun’s offering. Kyuhyun found himself smiling as well.

It was then that he felt a familiar prescience, not entirely different from the one he’d had about Changmin. And yet it wasn’t the same - Changmin did not awake this complex sense of protectiveness warring with his own awkwardness. Nevertheless, the feeling of anticipation remained, and although they did not speak again for the rest of the meal, Kyuhyun allowed himself to nurture in his chest the irrational but iridescent notion that something meaningful may develop from this meeting too.


	2. Chapter 2

Being away from home for an unprecedented period of time puts a strain on the Korean Super Junior-M members. More often than not they’re cloistered in their lodgings or in studios, with the remainder of the time spent being shuttled down various Chinese streets and highways, all unfamiliar and labeled in a script they can’t read. Kyuhyun finds himself shutting out most of what he hears around him these days, his rudimentary command of Mandarin hardly adequate to pick up anything but an occasional word here and there amid the ceaseless chatter of conversations enclosing but never including him. He wants to be able to listen and speak more, to get better at the language, but he’s become exhausted in a way he’d never been before.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he confesses to Zhou Mi one night in a hotel room in Guangzhou.

Zhou Mi’s sitting cross-legged on his own bed, freshly showered and toweling the dampness out of his hair. When he stops and looks over at Kyuhyun, the astute understanding in his eyes wars with how comically mussed-up he looks.

Kyuhyun glances away for a moment, feeling exposed. There’s a slow dull ache in his bones and his insides feel unsettled from weeks and weeks of smoggy air and unfamiliar food. He closes his eyes momentarily and when he opens them again, Zhou Mi’s hovering by his bed.

“Kui Xian, are you sick?”

Kyuhyun thinks Zhou Mi doesn’t actually mean it. The question is just _ke tao hua_ (客套话), a phrase Kyuhyun learned somewhere between Beijing and Shanghai, thrown out by Hankyung when he was explaining the social pleasantries they were expected to exchange as they flitted between producers and directors and artistes in a foreign - sometimes hostile - scene. It’s a safe response to Kyuhyun’s question, which is too heavy.

Zhou Mi moves to sit on the edge of Kyuhyun’s bed and he brushes the side of Kyuhyun’s face gently with the back of his hand. Kyuhyun reflexively leans into the cool touch and cannot find it in himself to be embarrassed.

“At the start, I felt lonely and it was really difficult,” Zhou Mi says in Korean, but in the space of their room he’s allowed his Wuhanese inflections to seep into his voice. “But if you just bear with it a little more, you’ll start to feel better. Besides, you’ll be home in two months.”

Kyuhyun catches on to Zhou Mi’s fingers before he can retract his hand. The desire for closeness claws at his heart, and it’s a distracting feeling that Kyuhyun doesn’t know how to process. He recalls a conversation he’d once had with Changmin, in which the latter had recounted a period of time in Japan in which he’d crawl into Yoochun’s bed every night, unable to sleep otherwise. 

“But you dislike skinship,” Kyuhyun had remarked, amused.

“That was not skinship,” Changmin retorted, finishing the last piece of samgyupsal before Kyuhyun could get to it. Kyuhyun shrugged.

Skinship. _Ke tao hua_. Both are words that Kyuhyun has come to use more and more unthinkingly, the longer he stays in the industry. Both are tasteless words – abbreviations for aspects of human interaction cheapened by commodification. Zhou Mi is now stroking his hair, and in this private space between them, there is no falsity in his words or actions, only gentleness. Kyuhyun has always appreciated precision; it’s why he loved mathematics and it’s what he strives for with every note he sings. This is why a soft sense of shame creeps up upon him now when he realises how careless he had been with his language. 

Zhou Mi hums a soft melody that sounds suspiciously like a Wang Leehom song. Kyuhyun doesn’t like to be seen when he’s vulnerable and a part of him still recoils a little at the prospect of being touched affectionately. But right now he feels breakable, and finds himself picturing Changmin as he had been a few years ago, when he was more gangly then lithe, curled up around Yoochun, perhaps with his nose buried against his shoulder blade, or perhaps with Yoochun’s arms snug around his waist, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of his breathing and the warmth of his soap-and-cigarette scent.

Kyuhyun’s body now craves such a tenderness and it scares him a little. He closes his eyes and listens to Zhou Mi’s steady voice until he falls asleep.

 

\--

 

The thing about Zhou Mi is that he is so _giving_. Kyuhyun watches him dispense his affection and feels admiration but also a grudging sense of trepidation. These instances add up surely and logically, amounting to this growing knot of helpless fondness in his chest. The bright smiles Zhou Mi gives to fans and members alike; all the times Kyuhyun has wandered into the kitchen to find him helping Ryeowook slice vegetables in companionable silence, possibly one of the few members who’d keep the younger man company while he is cooking; his generous hugs; all those extra hours he puts into helping the members with their Chinese...

This is one of those nights.

It’s nearly midnight and Kyuhyun had thought he’d be the last one left in the studio as he finished up one of his final mixes, but there’s one more light on down the hall and so he heads there in curiosity.

Donghae’s in the recording studio, and when Kyuhyun steps closer to the glass pane, he sees Zhou Mi in the adjoining mixing room making notes on a lyric sheet. Kyuhyun frowns, pushing the door open and coming up behind Zhou Mi just as he begins talking to Donghae over the microphone.

“You’ve got it nearly right, just remember to pronounce the vowels in the chorus a little more cleanly… Oh, Kui Xian! You’re still here?”

“You’re one to talk. Haven’t you been here since morning?”

Donghae looks up at Zhou Mi through the glass, surprised, just as Zhou Mi turns to Kyuhyun, at once apologetic and indignant. Kyuhyun raises an eyebrow in a wry challenge, refusing to back down even as Zhou Mi turns on the full force of his puppy-dog eyes. Two can play at this game, but Kyuhyun would never admit that his heart softens dangerously. It’s been doing that and obliquely he can guess at the shape of its meaning, but pushes that consciousness away, wanting to steep in fogginess for a while longer.

The door creaks open; Donghae enters the mixing room. “I wouldn’t have asked you to stay behind with me if I’d known – Zhou Mi-hyung, you should go home.”

Kyuhyun eventually succeeds in coaxing Zhou Mi into a taxi. As the vehicle pulls away from the sidewalk, he watches with dry, tired eyes the florid lights of Beijing flashing by outside. The people on the streets are young like him, and they are making their laughing way to clubs in flashy clothing, or thronging the roadside eateries, or are strolling along hand-in-hand, coupled and carefree. Kyuhyun’s barely ever spent his youth in the same way and the thought makes him feel too young and too old at the same time.

A song comes on the radio and Zhou Mi begins humming along. It sounds like an old song, and it’s one that Kyuhyun doesn’t know. In the dim interior of this taxi, neon plays across their skin and the dulcet tones of the singer permeates the space. It adds up to a quiet sense of nostalgia and isolation. Zhou Mi has his cap pulled low but there’s no hiding the darkened circles under his eyes, the jut of his cheekbones, the way his shoulders are slightly slumped from their usual proud posture.

It’s not a side of him that is divulged easily. Kyuhyun wonders if this means that Zhou Mi trusts him more so than others, or if he’s just reached a point of exhaustion.

“You look tired lately. You should rest more,” Kyuhyun says in halting Mandarin.

Zhou Mi smiles a little and shrugs in a defeated manner. “After the album’s done.”

It makes Kyuhyun irrationally frustrated and sad. It’s _wrong_ that Zhou Mi looks like this, wrung and washed out. They’re at the prime of their youth and in one of the most exciting cities in the world, and here they are, bone-deep exhaustion sinking them deeper into the seat of this anonymous taxi, the only artistry in the scene present in the dying notes of the music coming to an end. When Zhou Mi suddenly reaches out to hold his hand, Kyuhyun cannot bring himself to pull away.

 

\--

 

Inexplicably, helplessly, Kyuhyun finds himself increasingly drawn to Zhou Mi.

It’s only logical – Zhou Mi radiates resilience and cheerfulness all the damn time so it’s natural that everyone who meets him is always somewhat enchanted, winding up having a soft spot for him the moment his smile worms through their defenses. No, it really doesn’t puzzle Kyuhyun at all. It just confounds him, the growing spark of happiness in his belly when Zhou Mi winds an arm about his waist, when Zhou Mi holds his hand so easily and affectionately both on stage and when they’re surreptitiously navigating night markets in every major Asian city there is, pushing through crowds too dazzled by the unrelenting plethora of neon lights and food-smells to notice two celebrities in their midst.

Kyuhyun tries to bury it, but always his heart flares to life when he tries the hardest, like a frustratingly unsolvable equation, intractable because of a wrongly-written number that is at once trapped by, and yet defiant of, logic.

This is the story that Kyuhyun has never talked about:

It is the story of a first love that he can’t ever mention on any television variety show or radio programme, no matter that all idols undoubtedly alter their own romantic accounts in one way or another. This isn’t simply about the dramatisation of a first kiss, or an embellished treatise on the beauty of a girl’s smile, or the downplaying of a first heartbreak. It’s nothing like that at all. There never is - and he thinks there never will be - a right place and time for him to tell anyone about Park Yoonseok, the boy who sat next to him for all of Kyuhyun’s first year in high school.

Park Yoonseok. There was something inexpressible about the infectiousness of his laugh and the brightness of the smile he’d give to Kyuhyun after the latter lent him his maths homework to copy off or when Kyuhyun slouched into his seat in the morning, a night of sleep-deprivation written into his scowl.

But it isn’t the inexpressibility of his feelings that holds Kyuhyun back from talking about them. His feelings were, and still are, simply unspeakable. Kyuhyun is not interested in lying. it isn’t a matter of easily switching up pronouns and making up a substitute name to rewrite this history into a media-friendly one. Park Yoonseok was so vitally and viscerally a boy. He was a boy who streaked like poetry down the soccer field, awakening a helpless sort of _want_ as Kyuhyun watched; a boy whose shoulders and hands and mouth and eyes silhouetted the contents of Kyuhyun’s dreams for a long, long time; a boy who was absolutely hopeless at music, but whose tuneless humming suffused Kyuhyun’s thoughts for a whole year.

But then Super Junior debuted, Kyuhyun’s life changed forever, and the years passed relentlessly. Park Yoonseok eventually faded from Kyuhyun’s world until nothing was left but an out-of-date contact listing in an old phone and a few class photos left in his bedroom drawer.

And this is the unspoken part of a story that Kyuhyun has told before:

On the most terrifying night of his existence, as his life flowed onto the road littered with broken glass and the warped remains of a van, the sound of Hyukjae crying and praying was the only thing anchoring him to a tenuous consciousness.

It was then that Kyuhyun suddenly thought of Park Yoonseok, and then of the handful of other men who had ignited his desires and fuelled his fantasies over the years. And in his mind he began to pray too. _God, oh God, please let me live. I promise to bury this sinful part of me if only you’d let me survive this._

Months and months later, after the accident, when they could begin to talk about it again, Hyukjae said, “That night… You were delirious and mumbling a lot of strange things before the ambulance came. I was so scared then, and I’m so glad you’re still with us now, Kyuhyunnie.”

Kyuhyun knows that emerging from his accident with both his life and voice intact was a feat of probability, inexplicable without invoking luck or miracles.

“God has been good to you,” his mother had said the morning he’d woken up in the hospital.

And so with the voice that God returned to him, Kyuhyun sings countless songs about happiness and heartache, and does not ever think again about Park Yoonseok, that boy he first loved.


	3. Chapter 3

The days blur into a dizzying stretch of rehearsals and concerts and fan-signing events and endless, endless nights once Super Show Three begins. Kyuhyun becomes accustomed once again to waking up in planes and random hotel rooms, all sterile and pleasant in the same way no matter the city. He keeps a notebook in his travelling backpack filled with greetings for the fans written in six different languages, dutifully transliterated into hangeul. Chinese is not one of them; these days, when they tour in China or Taiwan, conversational phrases in Mandarin begin to flow from his mouth with a smoothness that impresses the locals, surprises Kyuhyun, and delights Zhou Mi.

“You’re really talented with languages, Kui Xian,” Zhou Mi says, and Kyuhyun cannot suppress that spark of pride that rises in his belly when he notices that Zhou Mi is speaking to him in Mandarin, and that he’s been doing that more and more recently.

When the tour takes them to Japan, a blessed reprieve in their schedule means that Kyuhyun can meet up with Changmin.

They go to a low-key izakaya near Shibuya that the latter favours. His best friend has lost weight yet again, Kyuhyun notes. The long, punishing hiatus and lawsuit, and subsequent intensity of an impending comeback have clearly done a number on him.

Changmin catches him staring and gives him a warning glare, clearly not wanting to talk about it.

The waiter comes to their table, and Kyuhyun watches as he orders for the both of them, Japanese rolling off his tongue as though it were Korean. What must it be like, to be able to speak so effortlessly in another country, to have a favourite restaurant in another city, to come to the realisation that what was once foreign could now also be home? 

“You may as well settle down here,” he jokes.

Changmin’s expression turns a little pensive. “I might, someday.”

Impulsively, Kyuhyun reaches across the table to grip his shoulder in reassurance. He could do anything to lighten that involuntary slump in Changmin’s back. Changmin tries to smile but it only makes him look more miserable. Kyuhyun cannot bear to see the faltering light in his eyes, and so he fills two glasses with sake and pushes one to Changmin, watching as he gratefully takes a sip, hiding the tension written into the corners of his lips behind the jut of his too-thin wrist and the porcelain glass.

They eat and drink in silence, the warm air occasionally punctuated with a cold draft that comes in every time the door to the izakaya opens. Changmin’s lost in his thoughts, and Kyuhyun knows better than to interrupt his furious bouts of meditation. Instead, he picks at the food, content to rest his voice and linger in silence.

“How’s the tour?” Changmin asks, when they’re onto their fifth glass of sake. He looks a little more relaxed now, his eyes having lost some of the hunted look that had been haunting them.

Kyuhyun pauses to think. “Better than the previous ones,” he answers truthfully, “it doesn’t feel as exhausting as it used to be.”

“You’ve either learned how to take care of yourself,” Changmin’s voice is wry, “or someone’s doing it for you.”

Kyuhyun grins in response, and does not mention Zhou Mi constantly forcing more food onto his plate at breakfast, or the fact that he’s not been staying up to game as much since he started rooming with Zhou Mi when they travel, or waking up some mornings feeling perfectly rested, his head still pillowed on Zhou Mi’s shoulder. His days have been filled with Zhou Mi and there is a sweetness in his heart that he will never admit out loud.

Changmin looks absolutely wrecked, and Kyuhyun cannot help but picture him and the insomniac bouts that he gets into under extreme stress, wide awake in an apartment with three empty beds.

Later that night, when they’re stepping out onto the sidewalk, Kyuhyun grabs Changmin’s arm just as he’s turning to leave and pulls him into a hug. “Yah,” he says, feeling Changmin tense instinctively before relaxing. “Take care of yourself. And you know you can always call me, right?”

“Gross,” Changmin replies laughingly, but his arms wind around Kyuhyun’s sides as well, gripping the back of his coat with both hands briefly before he lets go.

Kyuhyun watches him hail a taxi and get into it, scarf flapping in the cold wind.

 

\--

 

When they finally get back into Seoul, Kyuhyun spends his first night back watching some random Taiwanese drama with Zhou Mi, takeout boxes littering the coffee table and their limbs sprawled messily as they slump on the sofa. It’s pretty badly scripted - even Kyuhyun can tell, with his limited Mandarin - and he’s not shy about his opinion.

Zhou Mi just laughs and tangles his fingers affectionately in Kyuhyun’s hair. His lips are stained red with the wine that they’ve been drinking, and Kyuhyun forces himself to look away.

“Kui Xian.” Zhou Mi’s voice is soft and intimate. He doesn’t say anything else, as though Kyuhyun’s name itself were substance enough to be uttered - not as a prelude to something more but as a complete story on its own.

Kyuhyun cannot stop the thunderous beat of his traitorous heart. He takes another sip of wine.

The voice of the lead actress fills the room. Exhaustion and their wine-induced stupor mean they do not stay awake for long.

When Kyuhyun wakes again after an indeterminate time, the DVD has stopped playing but Zhou Mi’s laptop is still on. He’s encircled in Zhou Mi’s warmth, and he can feel the soft rise and fall of his chest, the tickle of his even breathing on his cheek. It makes him feel so safe it scares him. Kyuhyun shuts his eyes, lingering for another minute, maybe two, before he pulls away, painfully gentle so as not to disturb Zhou Mi.

His chest aches with want.

After shutting the laptop and turning off the lights in the living room, Kyuhyun goes to his room and comes back with a blanket. He maneuvers Zhou Mi so that he’s lying down properly, and it’s testament to how much he’s been run ragged when the older man doesn’t stir from his sleep at all.

Kyuhyun can’t take his eyes off Zhou Mi’s face as he drapes the blanket over his body. Everything that he’d been burying for years comes back. After all that time it turns out that nothing has abated and instead there is now an ardent yearning for this man inside of him. It’s like hearing an old song playing again on the radio after decades of obscurity. Kyuhyun doesn’t know if he feels cheated or frightened.

 _Just this once_ , he tells himself, _just this once and then I’ll stop for real_.

Zhou Mi doesn’t wake up when Kyuhyun kisses his forehead. He doesn’t know if he would’ve wanted him to.

 _You are my most terrifying and precious secret_ , he thinks, and returns to his room.

He prays until he falls asleep in his own bed.

The next morning, Kyuhyun wakes up with a fever and a throbbing headache. The sun shines into his eyes in the most painful way. He begins to grumble, and realises that he’s lost his voice too.

Fuck.

It’s at that moment that Zhou Mi knocks softly on his door twice before pushing it open gently. “Ah, you’re awake,” he smiles.

Kyuhyun can’t control his heart or the rest of his sick, disobedient body. He turns in his bed and pulls the blankets over his head, shutting his eyes again as Zhou Mi makes a soft sound of puzzlement before leaving. The pain in his throat and head only increases and he clenches his fists in frustration.

His voice doesn’t return for another two weeks.

It’s only rational - he’s been singing himself hoarse and barely sleeping for weeks on end. And yet…

The last time he’d woken up voiceless, he was broken and in a hospital room with tubes up his nose. Kyuhyun cannot shake off the thought that this is a warning or a punishment.  

When Zhou Mi finds out, he foists fruits and vitamin supplements and medicine upon him in a flurry of concern. Kyuhyun pulls away when he tries to touch him, trying to ignore the way Zhou Mi’s face falls and his hand falters in mid-motion. After a day or two of trying to avoid him, Kyuhyun gives up and goes home for a while. He only returns when his voice has recovered.

He hasn’t replied to any of Zhou Mi’s texts since that night, and Zhou Mi eventually stops showing up at the apartment.

Another arduous week goes by.

Kyuhyun has to swallow this deep upwelling of frustration every time he botches up a high note or fails to cleanly execute an ad lib. He doesn’t have the time for this. He needs to be able to sing.

“You’re acting strange,” Ryeowook accosts him in the kitchen one day.

Kyuhyun’s looking in the fridge for something to eat and he’s glad for it. Schooling his expression into a calm one, he takes out a container of kimchi and shuts the door before turning to meet Ryeowook’s eyes.

“What do you mean,” he says calmly, serving himself some rice from the cooker.

“I don’t know, you’ve just been, well, off. Did you fight with Zhou Mi? He looks sad lately.”

“No.”

It’s the bare truth and yet Kyuhyun knows, guiltily, that perhaps it would’ve been fairer to Zhou Mi if there had been a fight, some kind of open conflict, something to precipitate this sudden gulf of silence between them. But he’s tired of having his heart swing between deep joy and acrid self-loathing; it’s better to just push both away.

Ryeowook seems to accept the answer, and Kyuhyun picks mechanically at his rice and kimchi, methodically chewing and pushing against the soft-boned pull of a slow, burning exhaustion that comes after a bout of illness. He’s so distracted cataloguing the ebb and flow of his fragmented thoughts that he nearly forgets Ryeowook’s still in the kitchen until he lifts the frying pan off the stove, walks over, and slides a fried egg into his bowl.

It sits steaming hot on the mound of rice, glistening with oil and impeccably cooked.

Kyuhyun looks up at Ryeowook and he’s smiling with an edgeless affection.

“Kyuhyun-ah,” he says, and Kyuhyun’s heart lurches painfully at the utter kindness in his voice, “you know that you can talk to us if you need anything, right?”

Some painful knot inside of Kyuhyun untangles a little.

“Yeah,” his voice is a little hoarse but he swallows around the ache in his throat, “yeah, I know.”  

 

\--

 

The impasse lasts for months.

The other members notice after a while and express their individual mixes of concern and chastisement, to which Kyuhyun returns a tight-lipped silence.

One morning, he wakes up to see that Zhou Mi had left him another voice message on his phone. He clenches his jaw and resolutely deletes it, burrowing back into his blankets, intent on sleeping for the rest of the dreadful morning.

He’s done it before, detaching his yearning from the rest of his heart, and so he knows he can do it again.

Inevitably, he runs into Zhou Mi now and then at the company, but when the older man sees him a look flashes across his eyes as though he’d been burnt. Kyuhyun suppresses the instinct to reach out to him every single time.

“Yah, you’re being a complete bastard,” Heechul accuses.

In a way, Kyuhyun appreciates Heechul’s verbal slap to his face more than the polite admonishments the others have been dishing to him. He merely nods, and leaves the room before Heechul’s protectiveness over Zhou Mi erupts into genuine anger.

Kyuhyun hates himself more and more by the day.

It’s rather ironic, he reflects, because he’d only wanted to become someone he could be ashamed of a little less.

One summer morning, he goes into the studio early for a recording session and is still shaking the rain off his jacket when he pushes the door open to see Zhou Mi in there.

They both freeze, and then Zhou Mi’s expression melds into an unbearable blankness as he gathers his sheet music from the stand and hastily makes to leave. There’s a dullness in his eyes and his shoulders are slumped. Kyuhyun’s chest constricts painfully and even after all his efforts to let go, the instinct to protect - to _love_ \- rises before he can quell it.

Kyuhyun knows he fucked up.

He grabs Zhou Mi’s wrist just as the other man is brushing past him to head to the door, and feels him going taut with tension.

“Mi.”

“I know, I’ll leave you alone -”

“ _Zhou Mi_.”

Zhou Mi falters and Kyuhyun takes a deep breath before he looks at him. “I’m sorry,” he says in Mandarin, “I’m really sorry.”

Zhou Mi stares at him for a protracted moment and then two, and it takes all of Kyuhyun’s willpower not to tear his eyes away out of guilt and discomfort. He waits for Zhou Mi for pull away and stalk out of the room because he knows that is what he would’ve done if their positions were reversed.

But finally, Zhou Mi nods and gives Kyuhyun a small smile, reaching out with his free hand to pat Kyuhyun on the arm. The scent of his cologne is heartbreakingly familiar and within his reach again.

 _You shouldn’t be so forgiving. You’re too damned generous_ , Kyuhyun thinks. But he lets go of Zhou Mi’s wrist gently, feeling awkward in the face of such an unexpectedly easy resolution. Shame tightens an unbearable knot in his chest.

“I missed you, Kui Xian.”

The producer and studio engineers arrive just then, and Zhou Mi quietly slips out of the studio before Kyuhyun can react. A strange sense of undeserved redemption burns deep into his bones.

Kyuhyun clears his throat and forces himself to relax, his professional veneer slipping into place as he steps before the microphone. He closes his eyes and allows Zhou Mi’s image to fill his mind for the first time in ages.

The music begins.

He takes a deep breath and begins to sing.


	4. Chapter 4

Things don’t return to the way they were immediately.  
  
Logically, Kyuhyun expected this and he knows he deserves it. Still, there’s no stopping how much he misses the effusive emoticons and exclamation marks laden in Zhou Mi’s old texts, or how the older man used to come up behind him and lay a chin on his shoulder without warning.

At least they’re talking again. It’s enough to be thankful for.  
  
The start of the SM Town tour also means that Zhou Mi gets to travel with Super Junior again and Kyuhyun finds that he really looks forward to it.  
  
They’re at the airport heading to New York, when Kyuhyun notes that Zhou Mi has gently pushed past him to stand at the other end of the waiting area with the f(x) girls. It doesn’t feel like he means any offense by that, but still. Kyuhyun tries hard to focus on the music he’s listening to instead.  
  
Zhou Mi looks over Amber’s shoulder and smiles when he meets Kyuhyun’s stare. Startled and awkward, Kyuhyun looks away.  
  
“You weren’t actually _angry_ at Zhou Mi, were you?” Ryeowook whispers, sidling up to him from nowhere.  
  
“No.”  
  
 _Jesus_ , Ryeowook can be creepily observant at times. Kyuhyun pretends to dig around in his backpack for his boarding pass. Ryeowook sees through it and doesn’t push the matter, only making judgemental _tsk_ s as he watches.  
  
A few hours later, they’re on the plane and Kyuhyun’s half asleep when Ryeowook reaches over to pull his headphones away, putting one of the earbuds into his own ear for a second. Kyuhyun gives him a death glare that he blithely ignores. Kyuhyun was listening to a Zhang Hui Mei ballad and Ryeowook wrinkles his nose upon hearing it.  
  
“Kyuhyunnie, you need to expand your musical repertoire, you know.”  
  
Kyuhyun rolls his eyes.  
  
Ryeowook winds up the headphones and turns to look him in the eye. _What the fuck is going on_ , Kyuhyun thinks. Despite his amiable demeanour, Ryeowook can be fucking scary when he’s serious or angry. Kyuhyun hardly wants to be on the receiving end of either mood.  
  
Ryeowook gets right into it without preamble.  
  
“I wasn’t expecting you to be one of those people who’d let those rumours get to you.” Kyuhyun’s stunned and Ryeowook barrels on, mistaking his utter confusion for something else. “Zhou Mi laughs them off but he really does mind, you know. And your friendship means a lot to him.”  
  
“Hyung,” Kyuhyun croaks when he manages to get a word in, “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”  
  
Ryeowook frowns and tilts his head sideways. It’d be cute if this situation weren’t so bizarre to Kyuhyun.  
  
“Those _rumours_. You know, the ones about him being gay.”  
  
Kyuhyun feels blindsided.  
  
He’s always known about those rumours, but he barely pays attention to them. They’ve all been embroiled in various media skirmishes over the years and he’s learnt to tune the gossip out. It’s the only way to survive. Deep down, he’s always known that Zhou Mi is, indeed, gay - just not in the scandalising way the tabloids speculate about, but in a way that is so natural to his being that Kyuhyun came to accept it the way he accepts everything else about him. Besides, he’s also not blind to times that Zhou Mi goes out at night and comes back with the scent of another man’s cologne on his skin, looking sensuously mussed up.  
  
Kyuhyun knows others in the company have talked about it, making ugly insinuations or shying away from Zhou Mi. It’s rather stinging that Ryeowook has lumped him in with these people.  
  
He clears his throat and meets Ryeowook’s gaze unflinchingly.  
  
“It was never about those rumours. I don’t care about them.”  
  
“Then what -”  
  
“I don’t want to talk about it but you need to believe me when I say that the rumours don’t matter to me. I’d never… I wouldn’t -”  
  
“Okay,” Ryeowook cuts in quietly, the intensity in his eyes blessedly diminished. “I misunderstood, then. I’m sorry.”  
  
The de-escalated silence awkwardly drowns in the drone of the airplane’s engine for a while. Kyuhyun’s mind is still racing. He doesn’t feel offended by Ryeowook’s assumptions, just a little hurt, but there’s also something gratifying about how Ryeowook so willingly stood up for Zhou Mi...  
  
There’s something more that can be resolved here and Kyuhyun knows he needs to clarify it or he will burn to ashes with curiosity otherwise.  
  
“But what if they were true?”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“What if the rumours were true?” Kyuhyun presses on before he can lose his nerve. “Would you still have told me off?”  
  
A flight attendant passes by just then, and Ryeowook’s eyes flicker to look at her briefly. Her heels clack as she walks past them in the darkened interior of the plane, the other passengers ensconced in sleep. Kyuhyun can already feel his heart sinking, the adrenaline from his train of thoughts and shot of courage starting to wane. She disappears down the aisle.  
  
“Yes,” Ryeowook says simply.  
  
Kyuhyun veils the immense surprise and relief surging through his veins.  
  
Ryeowook returns him one of the earbuds from his headphones, choosing to plug the other into his own ear again. He ignores Kyuhyun’s smirk and motions for him to turn up the music. Zhang Hui Mei’s voice rises once more and Kyuhyun glances at Ryeowook for a split second before closing his eyes. He’s thousands of metres in the air, buoyed by a lightness he hasn’t felt in a long time and grounded by a song he doesn’t need to fully understand to feel.  


_If you hear about this too,_   
_Will you believe in me?_   
_Will you agree with the rumours_   
_Or would you know I’m still who I’ve always been?_   
  
_(如果你也聽說，_   
_會不會相信我？_   
_對流言會符合_   
_還是你知道我還是我?)_

  
\--

  
Kyuhyun’s phone buzzes in the middle of his nap between one round of Starcraft and another. It’s Zhou Mi.  
  
 _Hungry D: D:_  
  
He laughs and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, realising belatedly that he’d forgotten to take his contact lenses off and they’re now sticking to his eyeballs painfully. It’s 1AM and he has a schedule in the morning, but what the hell.  
  
15 minutes later, he’s knocking at Zhou Mi’s door. When Zhou Mi opens it, he takes in the sight of Kyuhyun in glasses and an oversized hoodie, hair rumpled, and laughs softly. “Did I wake you with my message?”  
  
Kyuhyun puts on a grumpy scowl. “Come on, I want chicken feet.”  
  
He drags Zhou Mi with him despite his protestations - _I need my wallet. Wait, wait, I need to change out of my sweatpants. Should I put on a cap? Kyuhyun!!!_  
  
Zhou Mi winds down the windows when they’re in the car and they drive around aimlessly with the wind in their faces until they find a pojangmacha that looks relatively empty but reasonably decent. Kyuhyun’s still laughing at Zhou Mi dramatically vocalising his dire mental dilemma between ordering ddeokbokki or pajeon when he parks the car and they get out.  
  
Kyuhyun orders both for him.  
  
Zhou Mi eyes the food warily, bringing his hands to his cheeks and squishing them in an utterly adorable way. “You’re not helping me to lose weight at all, Kui Xian,” he says sadly.  
  
Kyuhyun narrows his eyes, and scoops some of his own spicy chicken feet into Zhou Mi’s plate for good measure.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“If you lose any more weight you’re going to snap like a twig.”  
  
Zhou Mi grins ruefully.  
  
They’re halfway through most of the food before he speaks. “I might go back home for a while. My mum’s been ill.”  
  
Kyuhyun stills and looks at Zhou Mi. He hadn’t known at all. Zhou Mi’s aimlessly poking at the food with his chopsticks, his gaze distant.  
  
“Is it serious?”  
  
Zhou Mi shrugs and purses his lips in quiet consideration. “Nothing too bad, I guess. But she’s getting on in age, and well - you never know, right? Anyway, I talked to the managers this morning so hopefully the company will say yes.”  
  
Kyuhyun thinks suddenly of all the Lunar New Years and weddings and funerals and birthdays that Zhou Mi has missed, stuck in a foreign land.  
  
He’s never been good at this sort of thing, but for Zhou Mi, he always tries. “Stay with her for as long as you need,” he says, hoping that Zhou Mi can hear the sincerity in his voice. “I really really hope she will be healthy.”  
  
When Zhou Mi smiles in response, it’s a little wobbly at the edges and Kyuhyun wants nothing more than to make everything work out for him. But this is something beyond his reach, so he just nudges at the older man’s feet under the table with his own and tells him to eat more.  
  
Later when they’re walking back to the car, Zhou Mi suddenly reaches out and slings his arm around Kyuhyun’s shoulder, pulling him so close they’re bumping together with every step they take. His fingers idly stroke the curve of Kyuhyun’s shoulder and Kyuhyun shivers a little.  
  
“Thanks, Kui Xian.”  
  
Kyuhyun wraps his own arm around Zhou Mi’s waist and squeezes. He wants nothing more than to stop walking now and hold Zhou Mi so tightly that their ribs hurt. The wind rises and dies down again. They get into the car and Kyuhyun revs up the engine. He knows the gap between them has healed but Kyuhyun wants more than that now, wants to reach out to Zhou Mi and push his hand under his shirt and cradle his steady heart and sew up all his hurt.  
  
And he’s stopped wanting to push that yearning away.

  
\--

  
Zhou Mi texts Kyuhyun photo after photo the entire month he goes home, filling up his phone with little windows into his life.  
  
The alarming shade of yellow of his bedroom walls.  
  
His breakfasts of fried dough fritters and soy milk from the shop down the street.  
  
One of his neighbours, a chubby-cheeked seven-year-old girl, carrying an enormous rabbit in her arms.  
  
So many pictures of himself that they prove beyond any doubt at all that he has a dangerous selca addiction.  
  
His mother at a noodle shop, reaching out in mid-shot to intercept the camera.  
  
The pavillion at a park that his family visits on weekends.  
  
The texts come at all hours of the day, and Kyuhyun can almost pretend he’s in Wuhan with Zhou Mi. He doesn’t delete a single text, letting them add up to some imagined aggregation of how much Zhou Mi wants him to be a part of his life. Perhaps it’s vanity, perhaps wishful thinking, but the way his heart lights up each time feels too real to ignore.  
  
Things start getting busy towards the end of the month, and so Kyuhyun doesn’t really notice all that much when Zhou Mi’s texts begin to dwindle. After all, he sent so many to begin with. Kyuhyun devotes his attention to MC classes and radio shows and OST recordings instead, although he isn’t going to deny that he still checks his phone more often than usual.  
  
Zhou Mi must be busy spending his last few weeks with his family, he thinks, or maybe he’s caught up packing.  
  
When Zhou Mi returns, Kyuhyun pulls him into a hug and asks him how things went.  
  
“Good,” Zhou Mi replies, sounding genuinely well-rested.  
  
He pauses as Kyuhyun smiles and squeezes his sides harder, and then ---  
  
“I also met somebody.”  
  
Kyuhyun can hear the smile in Zhou Mi’s voice.  
  
Oh.  
  
 _Oh._  
  
So this is what it feels like to have your mind go blank. It’s never happened to Kyuhyun before, not even during his debut stage.  
  
He dimly registers that his arms have gone slack, and his ears are ringing. He knows he should say something in response but his thoughts are racing so crazily they have blurred into nothingness. It surprises Kyuhyun that he has it in himself to feel in such an all-consuming manner; the magnitude of his body’s involuntary response is so unexpected it’s terrifying. He doesn’t know what to say and he doesn’t trust himself not to blurt out something stupid the moment he opens his mouth.  
  
Blessedly, he’s saved from having to formulate a proper response when Song Qian and Amber pound on the door, yelling about the snacks that Zhou Mi has promised to bring back for them..  
  
Kyuhyun laughs weakly and lets go. Zhou Mi doesn’t seem to have picked up on anything strange.  
  
Before he moves to open the door, Kyuhyun touches his arm and says simply, “Congratulations.”  
  
Zhou Mi smiles and claps a hand on Kyuhyun’s shoulder. He desperately tells himself, _I can’t fuck this friendship up_.  
  
The girls enter their dorm with a flurry of laughter and good-natured jibes.  
  
Unnoticed, Kyuhyun quietly slips away into his room. His face feels frozen in a helpless, tight smile. In his mind there is only nuclear white.


	5. Chapter 5

The current of life pushes him relentlessly on. They’re preparing for a new album again and most days, Kyuhyun barely has time to sleep.

In his occasional moments alone, it’s as though he can feel the sore edges of his heart pressing in his chest every time he inhales the silence of late nights and empty rooms. It’s disquieting and so unlike him that Kyuhyun devotes himself to gaming and organising Kyuline parties when he’s not working.

He doesn’t like feeling pathetic.

 _I have dance practice first thing in the morning. And I don’t think my liver has recovered from last weekend_ , Changmin texts him after a failed round of negotiations with the Kyuline to meet up for drinks. _Flu :(_ , said Minho’s message, and Jonghyun’s had been equally brief: _In Thailand now!!!_

Kyuhyun remembers Zhou Mi leaving vocal practice right when it ended today instead of staying behind to nag them about their pronunciation like he usually does. He also remembers the smile on Zhou Mi’s face as he slipped out of the building, and how the scent of cologne was stronger on his body.

Kyuhyun really doesn’t want to be alone tonight, and so he bullies Changmin into coming over anyway.

“No alcohol,” he promises.

They wind up watching some generic, gun-filled Hollywood production on Kyuhyun’s laptop, squeezed shoulder to shoulder on the bed with a blanket draped across their knees. It’s vaguely entertaining enough for the hours to pass without any distracting thoughts encroaching on the white noise that Kyuhyun occupies his mind with. Changmin watches as another car explodes on the screen, his eyes a little glazed over.

Kyuhyun elbows him for fun and Changmin threatens to push him off the bed.

When the movie ends, Changmin chooses to linger. They talk a little about China because TVXQ are going there for promotions in a week, and Kyuhyun attempts to salvage Changmin’s dismal Mandarin pronunciation. ( _I don’t understand, you managed Japanese just fine --- Yeah, but Japanese didn’t have_ tones.)

He isn’t even surprised when Changmin changes tack and insists on learning the most vulgar phrases Kyuhyun knows.

Kyuhyun’s trying to correct Changmin’s way of saying some unspeakable phrase involving someone’s mother and privately bemoaning the indignity of this fate, when Changmin suddenly interrupts quietly, in awkward Mandarin, “what’s been going on with you lately?”

“Your pronunciation is horrible and unintelligible,” Kyuhyun deflects, and shoves at him, “yah, go home.”

Changmin obstinately continues sitting there while Kyuhyun maneuvers under the covers, resting his head on the pillow with an exaggerated yawn. When Changmin reaches over to turn off the lamp on the bedside table and lies down next to him, Kyuhyun can’t help but frown.

Kyuhyun tries to kick him off the bed.

Changmin responds with the rude phrase that he’s just learnt, his tones irritatingly impeccable all of a sudden.

“Yunho will kill you if you’re late tomorrow,” Kyuhyun points out as Changmin continues to exhibit his extraordinary limpet abilities.

“Stop trying to distract me. You’ve been really weird lately.”

Kyuhyun ignores him and closes his eyes, feeling his pillow shift under his head and Changmin burrowing under his blankets. He begins absently humming a song, distressingly relaxed about it all, and even comments on how soft the mattress it.  Kyuhyun wouldn’t put it past him to stay the night, knowing his stubborn streak.

A darkly hysterical thought pops into his head that this is not how he has imagined it to be like, his first time sleeping with another man in his bed.

Neither of them have any true intention of falling asleep soon. The air between them feels like a giant pause between sentences. They listen, hyperaware, to the sounds of Jongwoon and Ryeowook coming back to the apartment - their voices, the closing of the front door, the clink of a glass in the kitchen sink, the lights being turned off in the living room.

Kyuhyun imagines the ways in which things will change, his mind clouding with old fears. He’s seen many sides of Changmin and he confidently calls him his best friend because Kyuhyun loves and understands everything he’s come to know about him. But this is a novel situation. He wonders if Changmin’s eyes will shutter with disappointment and disgust; perhaps it is good then, that the room is dark and so he won’t be able to see it. In one mental scenario, Changmin tells Kyuhyun very politely that he probably just hasn’t met the right girl yet, but peels away from their shared closeness. In another, he just leaves.

Kyuhyun thinks that he would understand Changmin’s rejection, and would probably still love him in spite of it simply because he couldn’t bring himself to hate him. But still that glimmer of hope exists and Kyuhyun feels that maybe he needs to try, and if even Changmin is capable of pushing him away, then he knows that he needs to go on living by hiding himself.

It’s a calculated gamble. Changmin can be a preview of how much he stands to lose.

Kyuhyun doesn’t think he’s going to ever get braver than this, so he bites his lip and says into the silence, “I’m gay.”

The words sound devastatingly loud and they solidify what he’s kept contained in the recesses of his mind.

Changmin doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything. This is a silence that Kyuhyun understands though, the kind that tells him Changmin is staring at the ceiling and mulling over his words, turning them this way and that in his head, assessing, considering.

Kyuhyun tries to calm his breathing, deliberately focusing on the sound of the air conditioning system humming in the background. He tries not to luxuriate in the warmth of Changmin’s arm against his own, telling himself that it’ll be gone any minute now.

Then Changmin turns onto his side and props himself up on an elbow and looks at him steadily. Kyuhyun doesn’t meet his eyes. Nervously he licks his dry lips, desperate just to cover up the silence so he can’t hear the too-loud beating of his heart.

“I…”

As he has always done, Changmin meets him halfway. “Were you afraid that I wouldn’t accept you?”

His voice is heartbreakingly soft. It’s not often that Kyuhyun sees him like this - Changmin is more often cerebral, or caustic or pragmatic than he is sad.

Kyuhyun wants nothing more now than to take his hand and hold on to it, but instead he listens to the frightened voice in his head that says, _he’ll push you away, he wouldn’t want you touching him_ , and doesn’t.

“This is the first time I’ve ever said it out loud.”

It takes a while, but then Changmin edges closer. Kyuhyun feels his fingers, impossibly gentle, brushing his fringe from his eyes before Changmin leans over and kisses his forehead tenderly. Unbidden, tears well up and Kyuhyun turns his head away, striving hard not to cry. He’d spent many nights in this very bed buried in fear and self-hatred and now – Changmin stays close, not moving away, close enough for his breath to fall warmly on Kyuhyun’s face and Kyuhyun feels his heart beginning to heal a little.

 

\--

 

The second time Kyuhyun comes out, it’s far less nerve-wracking.

He’s at a restaurant with Sungmin, Ryeowook and Changmin after Sukira recordings have wrapped up, and he’s inhaling his kimchi jjigae because he hasn’t eaten since breakfast. Sungmin tells him to slow down lest he chokes, before returning to the conversation at hand about the eternal mysteries of romantic relationships. He’s quietly dating one of the crew members from his musical, and Changmin is openly commiserating because he too, is seeing somebody - a PhD student from his postmodern music class with an equally acerbic sense of humour. Ryeowook’s dispensing dating advice with an endearing sagacity, and Kyuhyun just laughs and concentrates on eating, not having much to contribute to the conversation.

Perhaps Ryeowook misinterprets his quietness, because he suddenly turns his attention away from telling Changmin why he needs to start giving Jooyeon presents that are not books and says, “Cho Kyuhyun, do not fret. I’ll introduce you to some nice girls.”

It’s probably the soju he’s had, or the easy comfort of the atmosphere. Kyuhyun looks up from his rice and feels no fear. “How about nice boys, do you know any?”

From the corner of his eyes, he can see Changmin’s eyebrows shoot up and Sungmin nearly choking on his tea.

“I’ll look through my contact list,” Ryeowook replies with admirable calm. He gives Kyuhyun a considering look before he smiles and reaches across the table to grasp his hand briefly and meaningfully.

“But if you get a boyfriend, please give him something more romantic than a _baroque music encyclopaedia_ ,” Sungmin chimes in gleefully.

Changmin throws a spoon at him.

 

\--

 

When Zhou Mi tremulously says, “It would be lovely if you could meet my boyfriend,” part of Kyuhyun still wants to instinctively shut down and pull away and make excuses for why he’ll be too busy, even though it’s already been five months.

But he easily sees through Zhou Mi’s feigned casualness. The media rumours can be summarily ignored, and paparazzi pictures can be laughed off, and Zhou Mi has every option to keep silent. Instead, he’s choosing to tell this to Kyuhyun. 

So he tries to channel Ryeowook’s understated serenity. “I’d love to. Maybe the next time he comes to Seoul?”

And he surprises himself, even, at how sincere he actually is about it.

Zhou Mi breaks out into a wide smile and despite its brilliant wattage, Kyuhyun has moved closed enough to notice that there are dark circles under his eyes that he’s tried to cover with BB cream. It seems like he’s lost a little weight too, and Kyuhyun can’t help but frown.

“I hope he’s treating you well.”

“He _does_ , it’s just. Well - long distance is really hard. And I’m just stressed out.”

“Want a hug?” Kyuhyun holds his arms wide open, smiling. He’s not naturally soft at the edges like this, but Kyuhyun knows now that nothing much can come in the way of his desire to protect and care for Zhou Mi.

And, well, he isn’t going to deny that it feels wonderful when Zhou Mi closes the distance and curls into his embrace, strong arms winding around his torso. That’s another plus point.

They’re in no rush to be anywhere else, and so Kyuhyun tightens his embrace and feels Zhou Mi exhale in faint surprise. They’re swaying a little to some invisible beat, and Zhou Mi must think he’s just being indulgent, though the truth is that Kyuhyun’s giving in to his own want to hold and be held in turn. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt so secure, at least not since the accident that taught him that his life could be taken from him in any swift and merciless moment.

Zhou Mi ducks his head lower and noses at the junction of Kyuhyun’s neck and shoulder, fingers absently stroking warmth into his waist.

Kyuhyun had gone back to praying a while back, though not to church yet. It’s still a step up, he figures, from his initial desperate monologues begging God to change him, and then his subsequent abandonment of religion altogether. Sometimes he still apologises, because old habits die hard, and sometimes he asks for grace and strength. Now, wrapped up in this moment in Zhou Mi’s affection, he thinks, _how fortunate I am to have this_.

And so for the first time in ages and ages, he thanks God - simply, sincerely, with every cell in his being.


	6. Chapter 6

Ryeowook sidles up to him when they’re just about to start a fanmeet, and Kyuhyun knows this can’t be good.

“So… Are you into shorter guys?”  
  
Kyuhyun chokes on a breath.  
  
The backstage manager’s handset crackles with a static-laden instruction, and he starts signalling for them to step out, so Kyuhyun just throws Ryeowook a puzzled look and mouths _what the hell_ at him, receiving nothing but an angelic smile in return as they head through the door and into a bevy of camera flashes and excited applause.  
  
“I’m setting you up,” comes the devious whisper during a lull in the event, when the emcees are talking.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I said I would,” Ryeowook hides an impish smile by taking a sip of water, “don’t you trust my judgement?”  
  
Kyuhyun plays with the marker in his hand, stalling. This is all too new. He’s only ever dated a few women before, and his track record hasn’t exactly proven him terribly competent at this whole romance thing.  
  
“He’s really nice,” Ryeowook wheedles, “and pretty good-looking.”  
  
“Hyung…”  
  
“ _And_ he’s a gamer.”  
  
It’s just as well that the fans choose that moment to cheer and scream in response to something that Hyukjae has said, because the commotion hides Kyuhyun’s surprised laugh. He looks over and Ryeowook winks and smirks at him. Tomorrow there will probably be fancams on the Internet with titles like “KYUWOOK IS REAL!!” and “OMG… Ryeowook flirting with Kyuhyun”.  
  
Another line of fans comes forth, and Kyuhyun diligently uncaps his marker and begins signing CD after CD. He times his next words well, so that Ryeowook won’t screw up his autograph on some poor soul’s album.  
  
“All I can say is that he’d better be taller than you, at least.”  
  
Ryeowook smiles and waves cheerily as another happy fan thanks him and moves down the line. Then he reaches across and punches Kyuhyun, hard.  
  
“Oh, are we ganging up on the maknae? I approve,” Youngwoon says, seated on Kyuhyun’s right. He reaches over and prods him repeatedly in the side. Kyuhyun yelps in surprise, almost smacking Youngwoon in his face because of his flailing.  
  
His hyungs are going to be the death of him.  
  
Three weeks later, when they’re on break from concert promotions, Kyuhyun finds himself getting out of his car in front of a pizzeria that looks surprisingly tasteful despite its log-cabin shop facade in the outskirts of Apgujeong.  
  
He scans the sidewalk, distracted with locking his car doors and the insecurity of being overdressed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have let Sungmin talk him into wearing the super-starched dress shirt.  
  
That’s when his phone vibrates with a text. _I think I see you! I’m the one by the streetlamp in a blue jacket._  
  
When he looks up, Cha Seunghan is waving at him. He has a pleasant air about him, and is wearing a white t-shirt under said jacket and dark jeans. He’s shorter than Kyuhyun but more muscular. However, what Kyuhyun notices most of all is his smile, which is open and warm.  
  
Kyuhyun has no idea how these things are supposed to work but he supposes manners are still very much in order especially since he’s the younger of the them both, and so he bows. Seunghan bows back but laughs and says he’s an informal person, really, and Kyuhyun relaxes slightly.  
  
They have dinner, and then coffee. Seunghan turns out to be just as good-humoured as Ryeowook described him to be, and far more ordinary and, well, un-flamboyant than Kyuhyun had been imagining. He confesses the second part when they’re scraping the last of the pizza from their plates, and Seunghan covers his mouth to hide his laugh.  
  
“I’m assuming you don’t know many gay people then,” he says, dropping his voice to a discreet-enough tone. Kyuhyun appreciates that.    
  
“Barely any, really,” he admits, “it’s hard in my line of work. To be.”  
  
Seunghan nods sympathetically. He’s working his way up the rungs of some prestigious chaebol and probably has never had to experience the stomach-chilling fear of reading tabloid headlines about himself that hit too close to home.  
  
When Seunghan wistfully mentions later, surrounded by the warm light of a cafe as he holds a steaming coffee in his hand, that he used to love music but gave it up to prepare for the college entrance exams, Kyuhyun doesn’t know if he should say that it’s a waste or that he has more personal freedom now, at least.  
  
Either way they’re both still here now, aren’t they?  
  
“Well, Kyuhyun-ssi, I hope I haven’t bored you too much this evening…” Seunghan says after they’ve left the cafe.  
  
Kyuhyun had insisted on walking him to his car and he had agreed with some amusement.  
  
“No, no, I had a good time.”  
  
When Seunghan falters, Kyuhyun reaches across the space between them to grasp his hand. They hold that quiet shared moment, halfway between shaking and holding hands. He is aware of the polite space between their bodies, and hates that he’s still considering how this would look if captured on a camera.  
  
Seunghan grins as he lets go and climbs into his car. “Does that mean I can call you sometime? I really want to, you know.”  
  
Kyuhyun laughs and nods. He’s never been the recipient of such direct flirtatious attention from a man before, and it makes a frisson of excitement go down his spine. On the drive home, he sings along to some ballad on the radio and finds himself wondering if Seunghan is doing the same thing.  
  
Then he catches himself and chuckles at how sappy he’s being.

  
\--

  
Three months after he meets Seunghan, two months into another intensive round of album preparations, and a month after Sungmin and Shindong’s enlistment, Kyuhyun wakes up one morning to find that Zhou Mi had texted him sometime during the night.  
  
 _Wo men fen shou le_ , it reads in pinyin. He runs the phrase over in his sleep-fogged mind as he stumbles to the bathroom, hearing Zhou Mi’s voice form the words.  
  
 _我們分手了. We broke up._  
  
Kyuhyun calls Zhou Mi as he wanders into the kitchen. It’s seven in the morning and Kyuhyun has to be at the makeup studio in an hour. The voice of manager-hyung nags at him in his head, but he’s seized by the need to hear Zhou Mi’s voice.  
  
The call clicks through.  
  
“Hey,” he whispers immediately.  
  
Zhou Mi doesn’t say anything, just hums in acknowledgement.  
  
“Can I come over?” Kyuhyun asks.  
  
“There’s no need to. I’ll be okay.” He hears the rustling of cloth, imagines Zhou Mi rolling over and sitting up in his bed.  
  
They steep in their respective silences; Kyuhyun restrains his desire to ask why while he stirs up some instant coffee, and Zhou Mi is presumably still ensconced in the cool, still air of his room, unmoving, probably a little red-eyed if Kyuhyun guesses correctly.  
  
He has the phone pressed to his ear against his shoulder and is rifling one-handed through his cupboard looking for clothes when Zhou Mi finally sighs. “I think I want to sleep a little more.”  
  
His hands pause from unearthing a sweater. Kyuhyun swallows an apology for waking Zhou Mi up and says instead, “I have schedules until the evening but I’ll bring dinner over.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Go to sleep.”  
  
The morning photoshoot feels like it goes on for days; Kyuhyun’s mind is weighed-down and he’s so distracted that the cameraman gives up and tells him to take a break and come back in ten. He apologises and heads to the dressing rooms, wondering if he should call Zhou Mi to check on him and then talking himself out of it. No sense in getting worked up; the day has barely begun.  
  
Knowing that it’ll calm him down, he dials Seunghan’s number instead and is is surprised that he picks up after two rings. He is almost always in some meeting or other.  
  
“Kyu?” They’d agreed that it would be a bad idea for Seunghan to call him by his full name in public when they’re on the phone. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing… I had a break.”  
  
“Wanted to hear my voice?” Seunghan teases.  
  
Kyuhyun snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself. Just needed to kill time.”  
  
Seunghan laughs.  
  
Ten minutes is enough time for Seunghan to deliver a scathing review of an action film he’d watched the day before and for Kyuhyun to run some lines for an upcoming radio show by him. When he returns to the set, the rest of the shoot goes smoothly and his phone vibrates later, when Kyuhyun’s in the van on the way to film a variety appearance, with a text that reads, _don’t think about me too much while you’re at work, punk_.  
  
He nearly drops the phone as the van goes over a pothole, fingers suddenly weak, feeling as though he’d been caught.The text belatedly makes him imagine Seunghan sitting at his desk, scarfing down some food as he chips away at a mountain of backlogged emails, and it momentarily dashes his thoughts of whether Zhou Mi has woken up to eat at least.  
  
 _I hope you’re not eating ramyeon for lunch again_ , he replies to Seunghan, _remember, it accelerates balding!!!_  
  
By the time Kyuhyun makes his way to Zhou Mi’s after work, it’s already past eight. Zhou Mi answers the door looking perfectly fine, but Kyuhyun knows better than that. The apartment is far too tidy when he steps inside. There’s none of the mess of magazines and papers that’s usually strewn across the coffee table with mugs precariously perched on top, and the cushions are all in their proper places on the couch.  
  
“Qian helped me clean up,” Zhou Mi explains quietly as he watches Kyuhyun set out takeaway boxes of noodles in the kitchen.  
  
“You should eat.” Kyuhyun steers him to the table.  
  
It alarms him when Zhou Mi abruptly tenses and shrugs his hands away. Kyuhyun steps back, unsure of himself. Sinking into the chair, Zhou Mi takes off his glasses and buries his face in his hands.  
  
“Mi?”  
  
Zhou Mi shakes his head, breathing deeply and audibly for a while before he says shakily, “sorry. You just really reminded me of Yun Kang when you did that.”  
  
“What _happened_?"  
  
“He said he was tired of me being so far away and that he’s fallen for someone else,” Zhou Mi intones, trying to sound dismissive. Kyuhyun watches as he shrugs defeatedly, turning his attention to digging in the plastic bag for a pair of disposable chopsticks.  
  
Kyuhyun tries to swallows his anger and sits down at the table as well, heaping more food over to Zhou Mi. “He’s a bastard and a fool.”  
  
“All this time he was quietly moving on and I was looking up apartment listings in all the cities between Wuhan and Seoul.” Zhou Mi knuckles at his tired eyes, “I don’t think he was the fool.”  
  
“Mi…”  
  
“I’ll be okay.”  
  
When Kyuhyun leaves at 2 in the morning after putting Zhou Mi to bed, the shoulder of his shirt still slightly damp, he checks his phone and realises that he’s had two missed calls and three texts from Seunghan.  
  
 _I assume you’re busy or asleep… Good night (:_ , the last one reads.  
  
Still standing outside Zhou Mi’s door, the corridor all too bright for this time of the night, Kyuhyun types out three different responses and deletes them all.  
  
 _I’m sorry_ , he finally sends.

  
\--

  
It was bound to happen, Kyuhyun thinks, his mind fogging up with panic, his disobedient heart racing, racing, racing. He grips the phone to his ear and tries not to throw up, tells himself futilely to calm down.  
  
“Where did you last see it,” he grits out.  
  
“I think I left it in the taxi… Fuck, I am so sorry, Kyu.” Seunghan has apologised about seven times since the start of the phonecall, but Kyuhyun cannot find it in himself to comfort him, not when he’s having a minor meltdown and Seunghan sounds calmer than he is (though it’s probably just the way his voice always sounds).  
  
“Fuck,” he rests his forehead against the wall, wishing he could disappear into it and not emerge again.  
  
“Are you going to be okay? What can we do now?”  
  
“Not much. Pray, I guess, that nobody tries to see your photos.”  
  
“Your company?”  
  
Kyuhyun closes his eyes. “They cannot know about us. Or me.”  
  
Seunghan sighs heavily and Kyuhyun imagines him pacing restlessly in his apartment, probably still in his work clothes. His body craves to be held now but he doesn’t know if he can face Seunghan’s worry without breaking down. His lungs must not be working right because no matter how evenly he tries to breathe, he still feels lightheaded.  
  
“I need to go,” he says shakily, “I’ll ask Ryeowook-hyung if he has advice.”  
  
Ryeowook tells him to lie low and wait.  
  
“There’s nothing much you can do at this point,” he says, stroking Kyuhyun’s back soothingly. “Tell Seunghan to keep calling the taxi company about his phone. That careless _bastard_.”  
  
“He didn’t mean it,” Kyuhyun mumbles, letting Ryeowook continue to rub a semblance of calm into his body, which is cold with fear.  
  
The rest of the day is an ordeal.  
  
Kyuhyun’s too frazzled to be of much use for their appearance on a show, so Ryeowook ramps it up and makes everyone else wonder at his sudden animated enthusiasm. It catches onto Siwon (who’s with them for the first time in a while, since he’d sign on to star in some ridiculously long historical drama) and even Donghae, resulting in some overblown gag humour that makes Youngwoon bury his face in his hands in secondhand embarrassment. It turns out to be one of their funniest interviews in the past few years and Hyukjae looks absurdly proud as they step off the recording stage.  
  
Kyuhyun watches it all, feeling sick inside with the thought that he might have just single-handedly brought about the ruin of Super Junior.  
  
Ryeowook squeezes his hand and holds it for all of the ride back.  
  
Before he goes to sleep, he calls Seunghan through his landline for a little while. He’s still a little angry, but knows that it has less to do with him and more to do with how trapped this whole debacle is making him feel. They don’t talk much at all, just share a the burden of a heavy silence together. Seunghan’s breathing is a little erratic and Kyuhyun’s heart clenches. It hurts to be the source of someone’s tears, especially someone with Seunghan’s magnanimous sense of humour and deep laugh.  
  
“It’s okay,” he whispers when Seunghan apologises yet again.  
  
He doesn’t tell him that he’s already mapped out all the ways the media will spin this - the ugly innuendo-drenched words like _homosexuality scandal_ and _fallen idol_ and _K-pop’s unexpected deviant_ plaster his mind with acrid layers of anxiety. He doesn’t tell him he’s imagined the invasive unsolicited calls that their families and friends are going to receive, and the way they’re not going to be able to walk out of their homes without being mobbed by paparazzi and fans and sasaengs. Perhaps it would be fairer to give him advance warning but nothing about this whole situation is fair. Someone like Seunghan shouldn’t have to be dragged through this dirt.  
  
It occurs to Kyuhyun then that this might be the way his family finds out about him - in the most merciless and undignified manner possible. Perhaps it would be best to tell them first before they hear it from the media, but he doesn’t think he’s able to face the recrimination of his parents right now.  
  
Instead, he calls Ahra.  
  
The moment she picks up, Kyuhyun blurts out the whole story - his homosexuality, Seunghan, the lost phone - before he loses his nerve. He tries not to cry but helplessness stains his entire body with a dull ache, and the tears come anyway.  
  
“I don’t know what’s going to happen from here,” he finally chokes out, “but could you help me distract mum and dad from the media for a few days first?”  
  
“Kyuhyunnie…” Ahra murmurs, “can I come over?”  
  
Kyuhyun chokes back a desperate breath, shaking his head. “Don’t. Most of the members don’t know anything yet.”  
  
“I’ll take care of everything at home,” Ahra reassures him, “so don’t worry. But I want you to look after yourself, okay? You need to promise me you will.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“ _Promise me_. I’ll make sure mum and dad don’t hear the news, if it happens. I’ll even help you tell them if you want me to. But you need to take care of yourself.”  
  
“Okay,” Kyuhyun whispers, trying to bring his breathing back under control, “okay. I will.”  
  
Ahra sighs, and Kyuhyun imagines that she’s in her bedroom, knees drawn up onto the chair as she rests an elbow on the dressing table. He misses home, all of a sudden.  
  
“I’m so sorry, noona.”  
  
“You have nothing to apologise for. And you’re going to be okay, you hear me? Everything’s going to be okay.” Somehow he doubts it, but Kyuhyun can’t begin to express how much he needed to hear those words from his sister anyway.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Go to sleep. I love you,” Ahra says gently.  
  
After Kyuhyun hangs up, he stumbles to the bathroom to wash his face, refusing to even glance at himself in the mirror.  
  
He finds that sleep doesn’t come easily, despite his efforts.  
  
After another agonising day of near-breakdowns, Seunghan finally calls him in the evening and says that the taxi driver found his phone. It had fallen in the gap between the seats of the vehicle.  
  
“I think he turned it in immediately, and he doesn’t seem like the sort who could hack into it.”  
  
Kyuhyun nearly collapses to his knees from relief.  
  
They’re just wrapping up from a magazine photoshoot and when Zhou Mi comes into the dressing room with Henry and Hyukjae, Kyuhyun blindly pulls him in and mumbles, “I want a hug.”  
  
If Zhou Mi notices how bedraggled he must look he doesn’t comment on it, and only wraps Kyuhyun closely and squeezes the breath out of him until he can breathe normally again.  
  
After work, he goes to Seunghan’s and demands to be cooked dinner. Seunghan snorts but Kyuhyun can tell that the petulant request makes him more relaxed. He lays the table while Seunghan ladles out kimchi jjigae into bowls, a little surprised at how he opens the right cupboards for the cutlery and dishes as though they’d been committed to muscle memory. The jjigae is steaming and fragrant, and Kyuhyun feels his stomach squirm with hunger.  
  
“Is this the only thing you can cook?” He teases, “every time I come over that’s all we seem to eat.”  
  
“It’s the best thing I know how to cook,” Seunghan corrects, wrapping both arms around Kyuhyun’s waist from behind.  
  
“You incorrigible flirt,” Kyuhyun grins and tries to wriggle free but Seunghan pulls him in tighter and presses a kiss to the side of his neck. The next kiss comes closer to his ear and Kyuhyun shivers and sighs softly.  
  
Later that night, just as he’s about to draw away from Seunghan, the both of them still slightly breathless and sticky with sweat and sex, he finds himself pulled back into his arms once again.  
  
“Kyuhyun,” the affectionate murmur in his ear makes him shiver pleasantly. He contents himself with resting his head against Seunghan’s shoulder, nuzzling into his skin. It takes a while, but then Seunghan speaks again. “I had a feeling that you would leave me, after I lost the phone.”  
  
“But you found it.”  
  
“Yes,” Seunghan holds him close, breath tickling at his hair. He sighs. “Yes, but still.” He falls silent and just stares up at the ceiling.  
  
Kyuhyun doesn’t tell him that his phone is now empty of their text messages and photos because he copied all the data into a password-protected computer folder last night. Instead, he shifts and moves up to kiss Seunghan instead, drawing a soft groan of pleasure when he gently bites at his bottom lip.  
  
“Stay the night?” Seunghan asks, even as he begins to push Kyuhyun away. They both know the answer to that question.  
  
“It looks too suspicious,” Kyuhyun mutters, slowly getting up from the bed. “I’ve got to be careful.”  
  
Seunghan nods and turns away, curling into himself.  
  
It’s the beginning of a gradual disengagement.  
  
Kyuhyun wonders, one month on, when Seunghan’s stopped calling him every night and when he begins to hesitate when thinking about going over to Seunghan’s place, whether this was inevitable.  
  
There is still a thick residue of fear in his heart that jumps to life every time he has to leave his phone behind in dressing rooms and studios. The one time he goes out for dinner with Seunghan in public, he spends most of it in abject nervousness.  
  
The people seated three tables down are not-so-surreptitiously glancing over at him, and he realises his hands are shaking when he nearly knocks over his glass trying to refill it.  
  
“It’s so irrational,” he tries to laugh it off when Seunghan looks at him, worried.  
  
“No it’s not,” Seunghan replies. “Kyu, you’re _terrified_. And I’m so sorry I screwed up, but you can’t live like this forever.”  
  
Kyuhyun tries to choke down his food. He can’t meet Seunghan’s eyes. To face his overwhelming concern right now is too intimate for him to do in public. There is a viciously defensive corner of his heart that makes him want to say, I don’t want to give up on my dream the way you did, but it is quickly silenced by a wave of guilt.  
  
Seunghan puts down his chopsticks and folds his arms on the table, waiting patiently for him to string a response together. Kyuhyun thinks that this generosity, this gentleness, is what makes him feel most ashamed of when he considers the growing distance between them.  
  
“I don’t want to be the one that destroys Super Junior’s reputation,” he finally says, clenching his fists tightly so that their tremor is less obvious.  
  
“Well, you might just self-destruct first.” Seunghan reaches out and pushes their shared plate of galbi towards Kyuhyun. “Finish that, you’ve lost weight.”  
  
When Kyuhyun drops Seunghan off at his apartment, the street is deserted and the streetlamps are out, for some reason. Probably a power outage. He dredges up the last vestige of courage he can give for the night and hugs Seunghan in the car, grateful for the dark because they won’t be seen and his impending tears can go unnoticed. Seunghan is quiet but he holds Kyuhyun tightly. They stay that way a long while, before Seunghan slowly lets go.  
  
“Drive safe,” he whispers, thumbing a stripe of warmth across Kyuhyun’s cheek before he gracefully gets out of the car, shuts the door, goes down the sidewalk.  
  
Kyuhyun stays parked even after he’s gone, watching from his car as he disappears into the building.  
  
The lights in Seunghan’s apartment come on after a while and Kyuhyun winds down the window to let some air in, turning on the radio and turning down the volume. Something relinquished, something lost - he struggles against the instinctive desire to call Seunghan for the sound of his voice to fill up this sadness. The night is cool and there is the indecipherable smell of dried leaves and the sea and longing in the wind. In this darkness, Kyuhyun allows himself to cry out his frustration and stress and heartache until the distant lights in Seunghan’s apartment go off again. Then he gathers up the mess of his heart, wipes at his face, and forces himself to drive away.  
  
They break formally up two days later.  
  
Seunghan calls Kyuhyun to tell him his company is sending him to Australia for a year and when he brings up the idea of going their separate ways, they both know that it’s just putting words to something that’d been brewing for a while.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Kyuhyun says.  
  
“It’s nobody’s fault.”  
  
It’s been an exhausting day of rehearsals and Kyuhyun’s bones ache from dancing. He’s not getting any younger and the throbbing pain in his back serves as a grim reminder.  
  
 _I think you’ve changed me for the better_ , Kyuhyun thinks, feeling wrung out and sad.  
  
“You know, I almost said no when Ryeowook wanted me to meet you. And I’m so glad I didn’t do that. Seunghan… Call me when you get to Sydney safely, all right?”  
  
Seunghan doesn’t respond for a while but Kyuhyun waits, not wanting himself to say something more that will break the moment.  
  
“Cho Kyuhyun,” Seunghan’s voice is fierce with conviction when he finally speaks, “you’re going to be okay.  And you’d better find someone better for you than me, because I want to see you so fucking happy someday.”  
  
Kyuhyun chokes back a sob and a laugh. “I promise.”

  
\--

  
After Seunghan, Kyuhyun gives up on the idea of dating for the near future. Being an idol casts a prohibitive pallor over having relationships, and he figures he needs to let his heart settle down again. Besides, Super Junior is beginning a wearying negotiation over their future too, and he doesn’t have quite the emotional energy to deal with much else.  
  
They’d all always known Super Junior would have to come to an end someday, even if they also believed - or wanted to believe - that something of it would always remain. But now that the eventuality is drawing near and becoming visible, it begins to hurt. After a seventh album, it’s clear that their sales aren’t going to go up anymore despite the fact that it was possibly one of their most musically-interesting and well-produced ones to date.  
  
(When Jungsu looked at the charts, he only shook his head and said, “We worked so hard for that album.”  
  
Youngwoon smiled and clapped him on his back, “Hyung, isn’t that all that matters?”)  
  
Most of them have solo engagements but haven’t signed extensions on their contracts yet, and they now have a precedent for the natural death of a group: TVXQ went on a long goodbye tour before Yunho’s enlistment, and during their final stage they announced that the time had come to move on, the both of them openly crying with their fans as they laid an era to rest in a sea of red lights. The stadium was reverently hushed as Yunho pulled Changmin close and tried to wipe away his tears even while Yunho’s face was wet with his own.  
  
(When Yunho enlisted, Kyuhyun watched from inside the car as Changmin walked him to the gate and then stood alone watching him go in, shoulders stiff with suppressed emotion. Changmin himself enlisted a few months after that, the last of the gods of the east.  
  
“When they come out again he’ll still go where Yunho goes,” Heechul commented that night, as he watched the news footage of Changmin walking into the army camp, straight-backed and without looking back. “At least that much will stay the same.”  
  
Kyuhyun felt an absurd pang of jealousy.)  
  
This state of uncertainty is agonising. Does Kyuhyun hope that Super Junior will last forever? Beyond the _ke tao hua_ they have to perform for the media, he truly does want them to endure - but in the sense of a lasting legacy rather than clinging to each other doggedly until they grow tired and bitter.  
  
Selfishly, he’s also done the math and calculated that he would have good odds in a solo career outside of SM. He wants to sing, and he also wants to finally live without having to look around corners warily anymore. Staying in Super Junior might mean a future in which the two options are mutually exclusive, and yet it feels so wrong for him to hope for a different one than the one they’ve promised their fans and each other in the ardent passion of their youth.  
  
Weeks after Jongwoon’s return, Hyukjae and Donghae prepare for their own enlistments amid the continuing uncertainty. Kyuhyun goes over to help them clean up their rooms in the Super Junior dorms, and Hyukjae teases him.  
  
“When did you become such a good dongsaeng? We didn’t even have to bribe you with a meal.”  
  
Kyuhyun laughs. “I just wanted to spend time with you, hyung.”  
  
He’s long past the age when he could only display affection hidden under a sarcastic, witty veneer, and these days he wonders why he used to put so much effort into such pretenses.  
  
They accumulate boxes and boxes of old CDs and clothes and fan gifts, and more than once, Donghae gets teary-eyed and retreats into himself staring at a particularly meaningful piece of memorabilia. Kyuhyun and Hyukjae leave him to his reminiscing for the most part, but as evening creeps on them unnoticed and Donghae has paused once more after picking something up, Kyuhyun treads his way across the rooms, now nearly empty with boxes lined along the wall, to kneel down and put an arm around his shoulders.  
  
“Hyung…”  
  
Donghae sniffles a little and quickly wipes at his eyes. He’s holding a photograph, and when Kyuhyun looks at it properly, he realises it’s one that their manager had taken the day he was discharged from the hospital. He doesn’t like to remember that period of his life, and so it still surprises and scares him to be reminded of how pale and sickly he’d looked back then, small and drained next to the other members.  
  
Donghae carefully places the photograph into a box that he means to take home and gives Kyuhyun a wobbly smile.  
  
Sweet, sentimental Donghae. When Kyuhyun first joined Super Junior he’d been won over by his quiet kindness, and even though he’s long gotten over his crush, he thinks he’ll always still be a little in love with this man.  
  
“I think I would’ve left the company if you didn’t survive that accident,” Donghae says, pensively picking at the corner of the box.  
  
Kyuhyun nods, unsure of how to respond. He knows that if he’d died back then, the members would have been upset - but to actually know the extent to which their lives could’ve been affected makes him feel overwhelmed and terrified and deeply loved.  
  
“God had plans for you and returned you to us,” Hyukjae says, coming over to ruffle Kyuhyun’s hair.  
  
The conviction in his voice makes Kyuhyun duck his head instinctively, a little embarrassed. “He’s probably really disappointed, then.”  
  
“Kyuhyunnie,” Donghae cuts in, his eyes wide, “why would you say that?”  
  
“I don’t think I’m following His plan very well at all.” He’s aware of his voice becoming tight, his shoulders tensing up in instinctive defensiveness.  
  
Hyukjae and Donghae give him identical looks of puzzlement and concern. Kyuhyun glances away, choosing to stare instead at the photo, at the boy he used to be. He thought he’d stopped feeling ashamed about himself, but now that he’s faced with the unwavering love and esteem of two men whose opinions he cares so much about, he still can’t help but feel like their faith has been misplaced, that he’s going to disappoint them eventually.  
  
Donghae moves closer and traces his fingers over their faces in the photo, lingering on Kyuhyun’s. There’s a faraway look in his eyes. His head is already shaved for the military and in the dimness of the room, he looks strangely vulnerable. Hyukjae sorts out some letters that lie haphazardly next to the box, filling the room with the busy sound of shuffling papers.  
  
“You’re here, and you’re healthy. And you’re living well - or at least I think you are,” Donghae says slowly. “I think you’re doing fine.”  
  
Kyuhyun smiles half-heartedly and shakes his head, but before he can stand up, Donghae grabs his wrist and looks at him so seriously and sincerely that the casual retort he wants to blurt out dies in his throat.  
  
“I mean it. That’s all that matters.”  
  
What can Kyuhyun say to that? He hopes that nothing - not even the army, not even growing up and then growing old - will ever harden Donghae’s heart. Kyuhyun leans forward on his knees and hugs Donghae, grinning when Hyukjae joins in. This much will stay the same, he knows, even when they’ve disbanded and are leading wholly different lives.  
  
He lets go of yet another stone in his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

Onstage, the band bows and the lead singer - a young woman with a mohawk and a jacket that Zhou Mi would likely kill to own - does an adorable wave at the audience. It’s the end of their encore set and the house lights come on over a hyped-up audience. Kyuhyun’s hardly a demonstrative person but he finds himself clapping with the crowd long after the performers have filed backstage.

His head is still buzzing as it always does after he’s heard mind-blowing music when they spill out onto the street with rest of the crowd at the Riverside Live House into the raucous Taipei night. It’s the best live set he’s heard in a long time, by a band that’s been making quiet waves in the Taiwanese rock scene with their second album. If the excited chattering from the other people around him is anything to go by, Kyuhyun isn’t alone in his excitement. He can understand quite a bit of what he overhears and that never ceases to amaze him.  
  
He’s so lost in his thoughts that he nearly steps into the path of a motorcycle, but Zhou Mi yanks him back in time.

“Tired?”

Far from it. Kyuhyun’s so keyed up with ideas and possibilities that he couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to. It’s been a while since music has made his heart and mind race, and God, he never realised how much he’s missed it.

“I want coffee,” he says, wanting to drag this night out. If they return to the hotel now, he knows they’re just going to go to bed and that will bring an end to this wave of exhilaration that’s swallowing him whole. Besides, they’re onto the seventh show of their tour - a K.R.Y comeback with heavy involvement from Zhou Mi - and Kyuhyun’s feeling relaxed enough about it to not fret about a late night out.

“I know a place nearby,” Zhou Mi obliges, and leads Kyuhyun across another street.

Ximending is at once familiar and foreign to Kyuhyun. He’s been here many times since his debut, and yet he hasn’t had the luxury of time and privacy to truly explore the neighbourhood and understand its pulse, beating in its traffic junctions and mess of motorcycles and clutter of lights.

They pass a cluster of bars with rainbow flags hanging outside and Kyuhyun can’t help but look - in a city so close to Seoul, with people that look quite a bit like he does, it’s enviable to see such a scene that would’ve been inaccessible to him back home. If he’s feeling brave enough he knows he can just push through the crowd and walk into one of those bars right now. Zhou Mi might be surprised but it’s not a stretch to think that he’s probably been there before, and could even tell him the best places to go. All Kyuhyun would have to do is ask.

But he doesn’t. And so they walk down another block, attracting some stares (possibly because of Zhou Mi’s height, since half their faces are hidden behind masks) but remaining unapproached. They wouldn’t have had such peace years ago, and Kyuhyun thinks of what he’s lost and what he’s gained over the various stages of his career.

Their hands frequently brush because of their proximity and the narrowness of the sidewalk. This too, is something within his reach - they’ve held hands so many times before and it’s sufficiently dark outside for them to go unnoticed.

But as he nurses the flare of yearning in his heart, Kyuhyun realises that he doesn’t want to tread the endless territory of ambiguity anymore; he cannot bring himself to entwine his fingers with Zhou Mi’s and pretend it’s only platonic. They’ve lingered for years in this stasis and nothing has changed - not his heart, nor their relationship. He tiredly wonders if they’ll stay this way until the very end.

Zhou Mi interrupts his thoughts when he leads him through a pair of wooden doors into a cafe with brightly painted walls and warm lighting. There is the fragrance of coffee and butter in the air and Kyuhyun snaps back into reality to puzzle at the Chinese words on the menu board behind the counter.

“Cappuccino, right?” Zhou Mi asks, and deftly moves to the counter when Kyuhyun nods. “I’ll get it.”

Kyuhyun folds himself into a chair in a discreet corner and watches Zhou Mi place the order, smiling and making small talk with the barista. He looks comfortably rumpled in a soft button-down shirt and faded jeans, and his hair falls over his eyes instead of being coiffed up. Zhou Mi looks amazing when he’s done up for the stage but Kyuhyun thinks he loves him best this way. A familiar hunger pools in his stomach and Kyuhyun quickly glances away to quell the desire to kiss the corners of Zhou Mi’s smile and trace the heady smoothness of his skin.

Zhou Mi brings their drinks over and Kyuhyun forces himself to smile normally.

“That band was _amazing_ ,” Kyuhyun says. “I really liked their style.”

“Right? I met Xiao Lan - that’s their guitarist - at a radio show and the songs she writes are amazing.”

“Wait, you know her? I might be a little jealous.”

Zhou Mi laughs. “Kui Xian, you should’ve told me how much you liked them! We could’ve waited to talk to them.”

“Just take me to their next concert,” Kyuhyun says, and sips at his coffee. He hums what he can remember of one of their songs softly, savouring its melody in his throat. “I want to do some songs like that.”

“Song covers?”

“Perhaps. But I was thinking in an album or something. Some soft rock, some indie stuff. More ballads. I’m sick of dance songs.”

Zhou Mi, who has probably catalogued to obsessive detail the popular music trends in the Korean and Mandarin scenes, purses his lips thoughtfully and his ankles knock against Kyuhyun’s.

“You should think about doing a Chinese album. It’ll be a better fit in the market.”

That’s an option he’s never seriously considered. “Do you think it’ll work out?”

“You won’t know till you try, right?” Zhou Mi points out reasonably, and Kyuhyun can sense that he’s getting fired up by his own idea. “You could start with an EP if you want to test the waters. I have songwriter friends who’d love to work with you!”

“Can you get Xiao Lan to write for me?”

“I’ll try.”

“Can you write a song for me too?”

“Aish, this kid… Yes, of course, why not?”

Kyuhyun begins to think about that hypothetical album to a degree that surprises him with its seriousness. _Why not_ , he repeats to himself, _why not_.

 

\--

 

_After concluding worldwide tour, Super Junior goes on official indefinite hiatus_ , reads the heading of their official press statement.

“Because we don’t believe we will ever truly end,” Jungsu explains to the reporters, and the rest of them nod in agreement.

The sight of them together in solidarity as a group has never failed to move Kyuhyun, even after so long. None of them are crying, having exhausted their tears over the course of a goodbye world tour. They’re ready enough for a new beginning now. Under the table, Kyuhyun holds Sungmin’s hand companionably. The older man has landed a role in a massive musical theatre production opening soon and Kyuhyun thinks back to the very first musical Sungmin had signed on to star in and how nervous and insecure he’d been about it. Kyuhyun’s proud of him, proud of all of them.

“Well, this means that I’m finally relieved of my maknae duties,” Kyuhyun quips dryly to give the fans something to remember him by. Everyone laughs, and he grins before continuing. “But really, I couldn’t have asked for better hyungs to be a maknae to.”

“Stop it,” Sungmin whispers from the corner of his mouth, “you’re going to make Jungsu-hyung cry again.”

Zhou Mi and Henry are seated at the table too, a victory that all the members fought to have. After the both of them say their respective pieces for the media, Kyuhyun lifts his own microphone once more before Jungsu can speak to wrap up the press conference. His heart is beating doubly fast and he thinks that if it weren’t for all those years of being a celebrity, his hands would be trembling too. But now he’s onstage, and he’s been waiting for this chance for ages.

“We have members who aren’t with us today, some because of personal decisions, some because they’re serving the nation and can’t join us. And I know some people say Zhou Mi-hyung and Henry weren’t with us from the beginning. But I just want to say that I believe - and I think I can speak for the rest of us - that they are our members who have stayed with us until the end. And, well, I just want to say that they’re as dear to us as anyone else in the group and we are grateful they are here today. Because they’re as much a part of Super Junior as any of us are.”

Sungmin squeezes his hand tightly, his palm warm. Kyuhyun blinks against the blinding flash of the reporters’ cameras.

Later, after the press conference has ended, Zhou Mi is nowhere to be found and Kyuhyun paces various corridors searching, before he eventually runs into him coming out from a bathroom on a different floor.

“Kui Xian!” Zhou Mi’s voice is strained. “Are you all heading to the van already?”

“Not yet, but soon.”

Zhou Mi nods and makes to leave, but Kyuhyun stops him. Zhou Mi’s seemingly smiling, but Kyuhyun knows it’s what he does when he’s hiding within himself. He was wearing eyeliner earlier but now it’s been washed off, though not very well.

“I was worried about you,” Kyuhyun says, when he really means, _I don’t want you to ever have to cry alone_.

“I’m okay,” Zhou Mi says quickly, and he’s still smiling as he starts walking towards the lift, grabbing Kyuhyun’s hand and dragging him along. “Manager-hyung is probably looking for us. I’m okay. Really.”

Of course he would be. He is nothing if not dependable and put-together. Of course he would say that. But Kyuhyun allows himself to be pulled down the hallways, aware that Zhou Mi’s fingers are nervously tapping against his hand even as he’s holding it. He probably doesn’t even know he’s doing that. Kyuhyun keeps a tight grip on who he allows himself to be in public - all of them have to, really - but he sometimes thinks Zhou Mi demands more of himself than he should. He’s too good at looking happy.

Kyuhyun wonders if Zhou Mi really is happy, wonders if he’ll be happier now that he’s free now to pursue whatever he wants without having to care about the scrutiny of fans. Kyuhyun wonders if he can be the one to ensure Zhou Mi’s happiness.

But he thinks he’s had enough of laying bare his heart for one day. He drops their manager a text to say they’re going to the van first, and silently follows Zhou Mi to the parking lot and into the vehicle. Zhou Mi rests his head against the window, and it feels like they’ve passed countless hours like this, enclosed in the same cars and buses and vans hurtling down foreign and familiar highways alike, Kyuhyun watching Zhou Mi in secret.

But this time, Zhou Mi is looking back at him and neither of them are hiding it.

It’s almost too much but Kyuhyun holds his gaze. It’s been a long time coming and moments like these are rare.

“Oh, space-case,” Zhou Mi murmurs in Mandarin, his eyes half-lidded with fondness, “what am I going to do when you’re in the army?”

“Pine helplessly for me,” Kyuhyun jokes, and Zhou Mi grins. “But no, actually, _don’t_ pine for me. I don’t think you will, anyway. Just... Just. Wait for me?”

Zhou Mi narrows his eyes a little and tilts his head. His expression is puzzled but there is a carefulness sitting in his posture and the corners of his lips. “Kui Xian?”

Kyuhyun falters, feels an instinctive laugh bubbling up in his throat to mask the silence. But he just swallows it and looks away. Outside the car, he can see the other members leaving the building and walking towards them. He has a minute and he thinks he’s waited long enough in the same spot.

“Would you?”

When Zhou Mi’s face remains impassive, Kyuhyun suddenly and unaccountably thinks of the time Zhou Mi told him he was in love with somebody else. He feels the familiar cold creeping into his chest but before he is overtaken by the memory, Zhou Mi reaches out.

Youngwoon and Sungmin are almost at the van and Kyuhyun feels like the space is too small, that there is nowhere that he can focus on surely.

And then he feels the scratch of Zhou Mi’s fingernail as he drags it down the back of his hand, the bite of sensation helping him ground himself. He’s transfixed by it, as Zhou Mi’s gentle scratch turns into a caress. His fingertips are slightly calloused against Kyuhyun’s hand, and Zhou Mi’s touch is unmistakably intimate.. Kyuhyun burns with want. Desire wells deep in his stomach and he doesn’t want Zhou Mi to stop.

They don’t pull apart when the door is wrenched open and the members start piling noisily into the vehicle.

“Hyung, budge over,” Henry mutters, clambering to the back of the van.

They shift to make room, the distance between their bodies diminishing as Henry squeezes in to sit on Kyuhyun’s right. Zhou Mi has now taken his hand and is holding it like a fragile thing as they begin to drive away.

This is my exposed heart, Kyuhyun thinks as he hears it thundering in his ears, and he marvels at how safe he feels.

Later that night, they attend a celebratory dinner with all the producers and managers and company executives, and it hits him fully for the first time that this is it, this is the end of an era in his life. It is likely that most of these people in this room are going to fade from his life in a gradual and certain manner.

Zhou Mi excuses himself to go to the bathroom. The wine that he’s been sipping constantly all night is getting to him; Kyuhyun watches surreptitiously as he takes a few steps with a slight unsteadiness in his feet. He gets up and follows him. They’ve been sitting all evening next to each other, only speaking in surface pleasantries and exchanging the blandest of smiles. There’s no sense in dragging this silent and precious thing residing between them into the harsh public world just yet - there will be time. Kyuhyun gently pushes through the crowd, eyes fixed on the back of Zhou Mi’s head and the graceful bearing of his shoulders.

Zhou Mi doesn’t even look surprised when Kyuhyun pushes into the restroom two seconds after him. He smiles and leans over the sink to wash his face, accepting the paper towels Kyuhyun holds out to him.

“Shut up,” he says, just as Kyuhyun’s about to rib him for being a total lightweight, “normal people don’t have the alcohol tolerance you do.”

Kyuhyun laughs and watches as Zhou Mi adjusts his tie. He looks devastatingly handsome in his well-fitted suit, but maybe Kyuhyun’s a little biased. Their eyes meet in the mirror and the teasing words die in his throat. Kyuhyun indulges his desire to look at Zhou Mi lingeringly, deeply, and openly.

Zhou Mi turns around to lean against the edge of the sink and his eyes are pensive despite his smile. He glances around the restroom and Kyuhyun doesn’t mention that he’d already done the same visual sweep the moment he entered. Blessedly, there is no one else inside at the moment.

“I once thought of leaving too,” Zhou Mi’s voice is quiet but it still echoes. “For quite a while, after Han Geng left.”

Kyuhyun’s breath catches in his throat, and Zhou Mi pauses before he continues.

“But it was only after a long time that I could make that decision. Did you know? There were a few times when we were on schedules in China that I thought of taking my bags and hailing a taxi and just disappearing. And then it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t have my passport because I was already home anyway. Once, I even had everything packed and my hand on the door. We were transiting near Wuhan. My home was just an hour’s drive away.” He laughs a little brokenly. “There you have it. I’m less loyal than you think, Kui Xian.”

“Why did you stay?”

Zhou Mi shrugs. “Why do people choose to stay, or leave? I don’t know. But I guess in the end I was more afraid of being a disappointment. It was hard to take that first step, and then I never did.”

Kyuhyun thinks about the boys they all used to be and how driven they were to succeed. Had Zhou Mi covered up his desolation so well that he left Kyuhyun in the dark, or had Kyuhyun simply been too self-absorbed to notice? Kyuhyun wonders if Zhou Mi regrets how the unforgiving life of an idol has altered the boy who’d first arrived in Seoul with a beat-up luggage bag in one hand, and dreams and ambition in another. And then he wonders when Zhou Mi learned to smile the way he did - unfailingly and unflinchingly, his cracks sealed beneath his sunniness.

Perhaps blind faith is easy - it’s always surviving in the face of doubt that is infinitely difficult. And perhaps sometimes the only thing anyone can do is to choose the path that will allow them to keep walking for just another day, and then one more, one more, one more.

“If you’d left then, I think I would have hated you.” Kyuhyun says. Zhou Mi’s head jerks up in surprise at his candour, and Kyuhyun holds a hand up to halt his response so that he can continue to speak. “I would’ve hated you, and it would have been wrong and childish of me. Do you regret staying?”

Zhou Mi looks down at his shoes. Kyuhyun doesn’t push, though he knows that they cannot stay here for long. He wants to know Zhou Mi’s answer, and yet there’s also a part of him that’s reeling at with incredulity at how they’re having this conversation in a public restroom, of all places.

“I was happier much more often than I wasn’t.” Zhou Mi eventually says, and when he meets Kyuhyun’s eyes, his smile is genuine. “I was happy a lot of the time.”

When he straightens up and moves to the door in a smooth motion, taking Kyuhyun’s hand in a deliberately casual way, Kyuhyun smiles and lets him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of the chapter reads a little like the end of the story, but it isn't! There's still a little more to come.

Zhou Mi has been quietly staring at the lights reflected on the other side of the Han River for the better half of an hour and while Kyuhyun would prefer not to steep in silence, he figures that Zhou Mi should get to do whatever he wants since it’s his last day in Seoul. So Kyuhyun pops open another can of beer and enjoys the breeze. It’s unusually cool considering it’s nearly summer, but at least this means he isn’t sweltering under the hoodie he’s wearing to hide his shaven head.

Changmin, back from the army with his hair already growing back at a maddening pace, had chuckled at Kyuhyun’s insecurity even though the light in his eyes was a sympathetic one. That was four days ago, when he picked Kyuhyun up from the hairdresser’s.

“It will pass. Sometimes it feels like the shortest two years of your life, though often it feels endless. But it’ll pass.”

At that time, Kyuhyun didn’t comment on how he felt Changmin had been drifting aimlessly in Seoul for the months he’d been back, his moorings cut now that he was at a new beginning.

Kyuhyun has no doubt that Changmin will pick himself up in no time, but still he worries. Of course he worries. In front of Changmin though, all he does is text him often and hug him even more frequently, hoping that some of the strength in his arms will flow into Changmin’s feet to let them hold strong whenever he needs to stay and to take him wherever he wants to go.

Kyuhyun is startled from his thoughts when Zhou Mi reaches across his lap to take a can of beer from the plastic bag beside him. He doesn’t back away, allowing Zhou Mi’s arm to brush across his chest. A smile pushes its way to his lips for no explicable reason.

Zhou Mi bumps their shoulders together, opening up his beer and taking a long swallow. Planes are cutting across the sky like delicate meteors. Seoul is beautiful at night; sometimes Kyuhyun forgets that.

“So when’s your first day on air?”

“They said next week, but I’ll hit the studios the day after tomorrow.”

The can in Kyuhyun’s hand is wet with condensation. It’ll be quite a while before they’re like this again. He doesn’t want to let go of this but it’s the only way they can move forward in their lives; the military is something that he has known all his life he’d have to go through, and he will never ask Zhou Mi to stay put when he has better prospects waiting elsewhere.

“That day, in the van…” Kyuhyun’s unsure of what he actually wants to say, what he should push for.

Zhou Mi gets down from the low wall that they’re sitting on and slowly crowds into Kyuhyun’s space, pushing up against Kyuhyun’s legs and resting his hands on his shoulders. Kyuhyun can smell the beer in their shared breaths and Zhou Mi’s cologne. His chest constricts with love.

“Hey, Kui Xian.”

Kyuhyun looks up, expecting to be hugged, but Zhou Mi edges impossibly closer and Kyuhyun can feel Zhou Mi’s breath against his lips.

He freezes.

Zhou Mi’s looking intently at him and all Kyuhyun can give in return is his wavering gaze. They stay like this for what feels like forever, and when Zhou Mi finally moves to cup Kyuhyun’s face in his hands, Kyuhyun lets him, closing his eyes.

Zhou Mi kisses him.

It’s not quite so different from what Kyuhyun had imagined. Zhou Mi’s gentle and there’s something heartachingly sweet about the soft press of his lips against Kyuhyun’s. When Zhou Mi pulls away slightly, Kyuhyun encircles his arms about his waist and chases the kiss, the tips of their noses brushing clumsily. He feels the curve of Zhou Mi’s smile and mouths at it desperately, wanting to kiss those all those years of unexpressed affection right into his heart. _I love you so much_ , he thinks, and tightens his grip on Zhou Mi’s shirt.

When they draw apart, Kyuhyun wonders a little giddily if they’ve both had too much to drink. There is a warmth spreading through his body and he’s acutely aware of every small movement Zhou Mi makes - how Zhou Mi’s grip on his shoulders has turned into a warm looping of arms around his neck and how Zhou Mi’s smile isn’t as wide as it usually is but it’s quiet and _only for him_.

It’s all a little too much, this incipient heart-bursting emotion that threatens to swallow Kyuhyun whole. He ducks his head and playfully butts it against Zhou Mi’s chest, blindly sliding his arms down to hold Zhou Mi’s hands in his own. They are cool, and slender, and gripping back tightly. Kyuhyun winds their fingers together and finally, finally, the shared warmth nestled in their palms is a naked one - after this kiss maybe he has nothing to hide tonight.

“Why’re you leaving tomorrow,” he says, unable to stop the petulance from slipping into his voice.

Kyuhyun feels the rumble of Zhou Mi’s soft laugh, and glances over his shoulder at the river for a moment, needing to centre himself before he dissolves from effervescence. The lights on the bank shimmer on the water’s surface and he breathes the night air in.

“Stay the night with me,” Zhou Mi whispers, ducking down to give him another kiss on the cheek. He isn’t going to say no to that.

They drive to Zhou Mi’s apartment. His luggage bags are already ready and lined up along the wall by the door. Everything is clean and tidy - it’s just like Zhou Mi to leave anything well, and conscientiously. The coffee table and wall decorations have been given away, and it drives home the finality of his departure from Seoul. Kyuhyun doesn’t have the time to regard the place for long because the moment he slips out of his shoes he’s backed up against the wall and soundly kissed.

Oh, this is going to be another thing he’ll miss. He kisses back fiercely, fisting his hands in Zhou Mi’s shirt, all thoughts in his head chased away by the smell of Zhou Mi’s cologne and beneath that, the detergent he uses, and his soap, and his sweat. What is this searing supernova spreading in his chest? He makes a small noise at the back of his throat and Zhou Mi holds him even tighter. Somehow they stumble to Zhou Mi’s room and collapse in a heap in his bed.

They kiss lazily, languidly, for ages, giddy with this new intimacy.

Much later, Kyuhyun confesses, “I don’t know if I’m ready for a relationship yet. A formal one.”

Zhou Mi untangles himself a little from their mess of twined limbs to look at him. “Why?”

His eyes are soft and Kyuhyun wants him so much so badly it makes him shake apart inside.

“I need more time,” he says simply, winding his arms around Zhou Mi’s waist so he’ll stay there.

“That we’re both men… Does it trouble you?”

It’s always difficult for Kyuhyun to talk about his heart with full honesty but he owes Zhou Mi this much, even if it feels like he’s forcibly dredging up the words from where they would prefer to lie dormant in his chest. “It used to. But that isn’t why.”

Zhou Mi is serious as he regards Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun finds himself wondering, in the space of this silence, what Zhou Mi’s first love and his first heartbreak were like. There are many things Zhou Mi hasn’t talked about and he’s afraid they won’t last long enough for him to hear all of them. He doesn’t think he can ever go back to just being friends again with him. Not after tonight.

It’s already 3AM and they have to be at the airport pretty soon. Kyuhyun wishes they had even just one more day with which to negotiate this new terrain between them, but this is what they have to make do with. He moves closer to bury his face in Zhou Mi’s neck. His breath is warm against his cool skin and he feels Zhou Mi’s breath hitch at this intimate contact.

“I want this,” Kyuhyun continues, glad that his face is hidden from Zhou Mi’s eyes, “But I’m afraid it’ll fail.”

What Kyuhyun has longed for is all here now for him to have, but he’s not taking it all just yet.

_I’m such a mess_ , he thinks. Zhou Mi isn’t saying anything and Kyuhyun whispers an apology into the soft cotton of his shirt. Zhou Mi’s arms tighten around his waist.

“Once I leave for Shanghai I’ll be there for a long time,” Zhou Mi says slowly, “but I want you to know I’m not going anywhere.”

Kyuhyun takes in the words, his mind racing through a million disconnected vague thoughts, too frazzled by his vulnerability to fully understand. He frowns, wondering if Zhou Mi might have missed something in translation even though his command of Korean is more or less native by now.

“Kui Xian, I love you. And I think I always will.”

Kyuhyun freezes. These words cannot be misunderstood, no matter the language.

It’s all a little too much, this heart-bursting feeling of finally arriving at this point that he’s spent years and years meandering towards.

He gently kisses Zhou Mi’s cheek, and then his throat and finally his lips. Zhou Mi sighs and shivers a little, his long fingers pushing under the hem of Kyuhyun’s shirt to palm his back. Kyuhyun nips at his jaw and Zhou Mi bites back a moan, fingernails drawing sensuous patterns of heat on Kyuhyun’s skin.

“You’re so important to me, you have no idea,” Kyuhyun whispers into the shell of Zhou Mi’s ear.

His words cause Zhou Mi to smile in a radiant, private way. Kyuhyun suddenly imagines the sight of a single firework exploding across the night sky.

Before Kyuhyun can follow that thought further, Zhou Mi rolls them over so that Kyuhyun’s lying on his back, head framed between Zhou Mi’s arms. Zhou Mi cants his hips downwards and _oh_ , it turns out that they’re both a little hard.

Kyuhyun laughs breathlessly and his body chases the slow rhythm of Zhou Mi’s hips, drunk with pleasure. Pressed into the mattress, Zhou Mi’s the only thing in Kyuhyun’s field of vision and the only thing he can feel, a supernova that’s slowly consuming him from the inside with heat and pleasure as they thrust against each other with increasing desperation. His breath stutters and he grips Zhou Mi’s hips, urging him on.

They don’t last long, not after having been wound up by an entire night of kisses; Kyuhyun comes first and dazedly feels Zhou Mi still rutting against him, before shuddering and following suit moments later.

They should probably take a shower, but Kyuhyun’s too spent and so he drowses under Zhou Mi’s comforting weight. Blessedly, the older man has the presence of mind to set his phone alarm before tucking himself against Kyuhyun’s side once more, similarly pulled down by sleepiness.

But then again, perhaps if they oversleep, Zhou Mi will miss his flight and stay in Seoul. Kyuhyun mutters this childish thought out loud and Zhou Mi huffs in amusement and tells him to get some rest.

Kyuhyun’s still smiling as he closes his eyes.

When they jerk awake to the blaring of the alarm, it feels like only minutes have passed but it’s already 6AM. Zhou Mi scrambles out of bed to the bathroom and drags Kyuhyun with him.

“Come on,” he cajoles over Kyuhyun’s complaints, “if you want a shower before we leave we’ll need to hurry.”

“Don’t wanna shower then,” Kyuhyun mumbles petulantly even as he obediently shucks his jeans - which feel disgusting - off. Zhou Mi pulls him into the shower after ascertaining that the water’s hot enough.

His reluctance at their impending parting and his sleepiness make Kyuhyun absolutely useless - he clings to Zhou Mi like a limpet and luxuriates in how Zhou Mi indulges him and ineffectually attempts to massage shampoo into his hair.

All things considered, it’s a pretty pathetic bath but Zhou Mi manages to get the both of them clean for the most part.

“I’ll miss you a lot,” Kyuhyun says in Mandarin as Zhou Mi’s towelling his hair dry for him, mother hen instincts in full force. Kyuhyun doesn’t care if he sounds whiny - the steamed-up heat in the bathroom makes the space feel small and the easy domesticity of this moment makes his heart ache because it’s going to be taken away from him again in a few hours. There has been too much wasted time in the years leading up to this.

He gets a sweet, chaste kiss pressed to his forehead in response.

When they finally straggle to the airport, Ryeowook’s already waiting at the departure hall, wearing enormous sunglasses obscuring half of his face and a worried frown.

“There you are,” he hisses, but he looks less miffed and his gaze takes on a knowing expression as he strides over, “they’re about to board your flight.”

Kyuhyun’s already said his real goodbye to Zhou Mi in the privacy of the apartment (it’s why they’re running late) and so he just watches as Ryeowook gives Zhou Mi a long hug at the gate.

“Zhou Mi-hyung, I love you.”

Zhou Mi gives Ryeowook a tight squeeze and a brilliant smile. “Come visit me after your military service!”

Kyuhyun holds his arms out for a hug when Zhou Mi turns toward him. “Call me when you get there.”

Zhou Mi’s arms gently encircle his shoulders and Kyuhyun buries his face against his neck, wishing for a last kiss but knowing that there are probably at least four smartphones pointing in their direction right now.

A slow burn of longing nestles in his heart as he watches Zhou Mi disappear through the frosted glass of the sliding doors. Around them, there are other goodbyes being exchanged in this departure area but Kyuhyun still feels alone in his particular sense of loss.

Ryeowook tugs at his elbow after a long while, and Kyuhyun smiles apologetically and turns to go. He tries to dispel the fog of regret in his mind and idly thumbs at his phone. Ryeowook falls into step beside him and when Kyuhyun hears the tentative suggestion that they grab some breakfast before leaving, he absently nods. They slowly wander to a bakery at the quieter end of the airport and the aroma of croissants and coffee reminds Kyuhyun that it’s been hours since he last ate.

“I want a bagel.”

“Brat,” Ryeowook mutters fondly.

Kyuhyun’s phone rings soon after he settles down at an empty table, and him immediately receives the call.

“Kui Xian.”

Kyuhyun feels some of the tension ease from his shoulders upon hearing Zhou Mi’s voice - he hadn’t even noticed it before.

“That was fast.”

“I love this airport,” Zhou Mi whispers mock-conspiratorially, “I’ve already boarded the plane, in fact. Are you on the way home?”

“Ryeowookie-hyung’s buying me breakfast,” Kyuhyun replies, watching as said hyung carries their food over, deftly sidestepping a child charging towards the display rack full of pastries. Kyuhyun imagines there would be more arm-flailing and tray-dropping if it had been Zhou Mi instead. The thought makes him grin.

_Zhou Mi?_ Ryeowook mouths as he sits down, and Kyuhyun nods.

“All right, they’re making us turn off our phones soon. I’m sitting next to a baby! She’s really adorable,” Zhou Mi chirps, and Kyuhyun hears rustling and then some garbled sounds that might be a gurgle of laughter before Zhou Mi’s voice returns. “I’ll call you when I arrive.”

“All right. Have a safe flight. I - I love you,” Kyuhyun says in Mandarin, his voice dropping to a soft murmur.

When he hangs up, Ryeowook pushes his breakfast towards him with a gleeful look in his eyes that Kyuhyun avoids. He quickly takes a sip of tea, nearly scalding his tongue.

“What was that about?”

Kyuhyun narrows his eyes and doesn’t dignify the question with a response. He unwraps his bagel, but Ryeowook playfully knocks their ankles together under the table.

“Talk to your hyung,” he commands in a sing-song voice. “You’re _blushing_.”

“Yes, yes, it’s what you think it is.”

“When did you…”

“Yesterday, actually.”

“You look happy, Kyuhyunnie,” Ryeowook says.

Kyuhyun nods and chews in silence for a while, watching Ryeowook demolish a croissant with deft fingers. He realises he’s glad he isn’t alone after sending Zhou Mi off, that there’s someone who can bear witness to his true feelings for Zhou Mi. Somehow it makes everything seem more real - that what he’s just begun with Zhou Mi still exists even though Zhou Mi’s not by his side.

“He makes me happy,” Kyuhyun quietly admits.

The mid-morning rush means that the cafe is thronged with caffeine-deprived people standing in line and families with boisterous children, but it feels like there’s a quiet bubble surrounding them. Kyuhyun feels oddly at peace. It’s good that he agreed to come to breakfast instead of driving home alone, he thinks.

The airport is gently lit with sunlight at this time of the day. Kyuhyun’s standing at another beginning and he feels so very loved.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I don't know too much about public service duty in the South Korean military, so this is based off some aggregated bits of information that I got from random places... Plus, some knowledge about mandatory military service in my own home country (which is not South Korea). Please do let me know if there's anything I should correct!

The days in the military pass with an uneventful and unbearable slowness. Posted to a strategic planning division after he’s deemed reasonably intelligent, Kyuhuyn reports to the army office in his fatigues at 8 every morning and ends work at 6 every evening, without fail or variation. He works on alternate Saturdays. He is required to stay in the army base, and on some weekends he gets to leave.  
  
Kyuhyun hasn’t lived so predictably since he was 18, though the regimentation certainly doesn’t feel new.  
  
To fill up the blank spaces of time in between, he buys an advanced Mandarin textbook and doggedly works through it. He hasn’t studied the language for a long time, but finds that he relishes the process. There’s something meditative about picking up bits and pieces of a language and finding that the world falls into place a little more. He even writes Zhou Mi a bunch of postcards in Mandarin, and spends hours tracing his fingers over the graceful contours of Zhou Mi’s handwriting when he receives his replies. Most of his platoon start asking him teasing questions about his Chinese girlfriend, and Kyuhyun only gives them the blandest of smiles.  
  
Kyuhyun knows he is simply going through the motions of a life he isn’t very much interested in living. The last time he’d seriously considered being anything other than a singer, he was 20. Changmin’s the science fiction nerd, not him, but Kyuhyun feels like he’s in some kind of bizarre alternate reality that lasts two years.  
  
A number of weeks into his enlistment, Kyuhyun heads home and finds a package in his mailbox. He cradles it until he gets inside and sits down at the kitchen table to open it, anticipation leaping in his chest.  
  
Two CDs fall out, both by Chinese singers Kyuhyun isn’t familiar with. Neither are wrapped up, and Kyuhyun puts one into his stereo and sets it to play, meandering lazily to his kitchen to make some tea as the soft strains of a guitar strumming fill up the air. A fresh-voiced girl is singing something about the rain (or at least that’s what it sounds like to Kyuhyun). He opens the windows in his living room. The tea leaves are steeping.  
  
He takes out the lyric booklet from the case and finds that Zhou Mi has written in Korean on the cover - _the third track in this album is becoming popular here in Shanghai. I really like her music and I think you will too~_  
  
The rest of the pages are covered in Zhou Mi’s familiar scrawl. Kyuhyun cannot stop the smile that creeps across his face as he flips through Zhou Mi’s comments about various songs, or his whimsical illustrations, or the random words that he’s circled and labelled with pinyin and Korean definitions. Kyuhyun pictures the way Zhou Mi’s face must have lit up when he first heard certain song, his fingers curling gently as he cups his headphones tighter over his ears.  
  
Once again, he’s hit by the all-too-familiar desire to be beside Zhou Mi. But today, he’s surrounded by the gentle chords of a song that Zhou Mi might also be listening to this very moment (perhaps he’s on the bus right now, or at home). It’s not quite the same, but perhaps it’s close enough.

 

\--

  
  
Then, more time passes.  
  
Zhou Mi visits whenever he can squeeze out a break between his DJ work and studio recordings, and they almost invariably hole up in Kyuhyun’s flat all weekend. Those times pass in a haze of wine, sex, takeout food and random movies. Eventually they all blur in Kyuhyun’s memory as too-brief, too-sporadic moments of luminance in his otherwise drab life. On those precious weekends, Zhou Mi fucks him into the mattress with an urgency that makes Kyuhyun feel alive with pleasure, and when Kyuhyun wakes up with Zhou Mi in his arms, he knows it’ll soon be time for Zhou Mi to catch that dreaded Sunday afternoon flight into Pudong again and he cannot help but cling on tighter. Every single time Zhou Mi leaves, Kyuhyun watches from the sidewalk and counts down the intolerable number of  days to when they can meet again. It always feels like waking from a good dream, and the lingering warmth from Zhou Mi’s deep goodbye kisses feel more and more illusory the further his taxi recedes into the Seoul traffic.  
  
Then Zhou Mi starts promotions for a new EP, and gets signed on to host a weekly music programme. This increased prominence results in his being noticed by more top brass in the music industry, and when one of China’s top songwriters takes him under her wing, Zhou Mi’s career scales another height. Kyuhyun cheers him on every single time. All this can only be good. Kyuhyun thinks of all the years of suppressed dreams Zhou Mi endured in Korea, and doesn’t begrudge the loss of their weekends together.  
  
But still, it’s not easy for him. Kyuhyun won’t ever admit it to Zhou Mi, but he feels like he’s lost the only thing keeping him going through all of this. He’s known all his life that this is two years that he has to give to his country, but damn if it isn’t more difficult in practice. Kyuhyun doesn’t know why, but everything just feels so inexplicably hard to bear. Somehow he feels that much more lonely.  
  
Eventually, there comes a stretch of weeks where Kyuhyun wakes up every morning in a dark mood that doesn’t dissipate by the time he crawls back into his bed again at night. The hours in between pass in a blur of silence punctuated only by the perfunctory words he exchanges with the other servicemen. Kyuhyun’s always been bad with strangers and it doesn’t help that he knows he will never see these people again after he’s done with this stint. A constant restlessness sits in his chest and sometimes it’s almost like he can’t breathe with how walled-up he feels.  
  
Zhou Mi still texts him everyday and calls nearly as frequently. More and more, Kyuhyun finds himself dreading it, and then feeling guilty.  
  
It’s just…  
  
Kyuhyun’s days are this boring blur of paperwork. It’s like being stuck in a tunnel and knowing that all he can do is to keep trudging forward. Meanwhile, Zhou Mi talks about the singers that he’s meeting and writing songs for, and the new ideas for his radio show, and the weddings and housewarmings and gatherings that he’s going to. Kyuhyun doesn’t know how to reply to the texts that ask, how was your day? He alternates between resentment and the nagging feeling that Zhou Mi’s life is going so well that Kyuhyun’s only dragging it down.  
  
And then Zhou Mi gets a week of vacation, and says he’s heading to Taiwan to visit Calvin.    
  
Kyuhyun receives the text as he’s eating dinner. The food goes tasteless in his mouth.  
  
Okay, he replies, and then puts his phone away. When it buzzes a few seconds later, Kyuhyun ignores it. His throat constricts with a burning sourness. Around him, the other men are laughing at somebody’s joke, and their voices grate at him.  
  
He wants to call Zhou Mi, but Kyuhyun’s probably going to explode the moment he hears his voice. He’s filled with the desire to yell at Zhou Mi or anyone else, really, and is tempted to fling his phone against the wall. He wants wants wants to do these things but his self-control wins out in the end. It almost always does. He turns off his phone, swallows down the rest of his meal.  
  
Kyuhyun’s fractiousness erupts into anger the next day when he sees a Chinese tabloid headline that reads, _Radio DJ Zhou Mi’s Touching Friendship with Calvin Chen: “I’m specially visiting a dear friend I‘ve missed.”_   Zhou Mi had apparently gone on an on about his impending trip on his radio show, and the photo that accompanies the article is a slightly old one, of both men wearing goofy grins on their faces as they posed backstage at one of Zhou Mi’s music gigs.  
  
Before Kyuhyun knows it, he has slammed his laptop screen shut and is stalking out of his bunk, ignoring the surprised looks his bunkmates give him. It’s a humid night, and Kyuhyun paces the grounds restlessly, phone clutched in a white-knuckled grip. The harsh lights of the camp beat down starkly through the darkness, and insects dart about in restless droves. Kyuhyun has the sudden crazy notion of leaving camp and barrelling his way to Zhou Mi. But what would he say in that confrontation? Kicking at the rubber base of one of the structures in the training grounds, Kyuhyun suddenly feels suffocated with the weight of frustration, and he sinks slowly to sit down. The cement ground is still hot from the heat of the day, and Kyuhyun raggedly exhales, listlessly worrying at the hem of his pants. Just as quickly as it came, just like a fierce summer storm, the fight leaves him.  
  
Kyuhyun really, really hates feeling like this. His mind has been racing with uncontrollable thoughts and feelings for, well, the past few months, and he feels like a joyless and irrational shadow of who he used to be. He stays out in the warm, humid night until the floodlights illuminating the training grounds systematically start shutting down at the end of the day.  
  
Kyuhyun stands unsteadily, and watches each light extinguishing. The continuous clicking and flickering sounds stark and hollow in the quiet air. Kyuhyun imagines a flock of birds, and the flapping of their wings are coming closer to him.  
  
Eventually, he slowly finds his way back to his bed in the dark.  
  
Kyuhyun doesn’t talk to Zhou Mi for a few days. Why weigh on the sunshine in Zhou Mi’s life with his negativity? He’s still angry. Kyuhyun knows he’s in a rut and it’s only right that he works his way out of it first, before talking to Zhou Mi again. He loves him so much that it’s only fair.  
  
It’s all very logical.  
  
Four days later, when Zhou Mi’s already in Taiwan (not that Kyuhyun’s counting the days, or anything), Kyuhyun gets a call from him. He’s almost dozing off, but jolts to alertness once he glances at the caller ID. He finds himself swiping to receive the call.  
  
“Hello? Kui Xian?”  
  
Kyuhyun closes his eyes against the sudden lurching of his heart. “Hey.”  
  
Zhou Mi stays quiet for a while and so Kyuhyun waits, because sometimes it takes Zhou Mi time to get to whatever he wants to say. The more important the announcement, the longer the silence. There is the sound of traffic in the background and the slightly distant bustle of a crowd - Zhou Mi could be in any city in the world but the only thing that matters is that he’s not in the same one as Kyuhyun. The fire in Kyuhyun’s heart has left, perhaps sometime over the course of the days, perhaps the moment he heard Zhou Mis’ voice saying his name. It feels like there’s nothing but a burnt-out ache left behind.  
  
“You’re mad at me,” Zhou Mi finally says in Mandarin.  
  
There’s nothing that Kyuhyun can think of saying. He feels tired. A few days ago he would’ve demanded an explanation from Zhou Mi about why he’s in Taiwan and not Korea where Kyuhyun needs him. But now he just feels stupid for being so possessive and _clingy_. Perhaps the worst thing is that he still wishes Zhou Mi had picked him over Calvin anyway.  
  
“How’s Taipei?” Kyuhyun finally musters up the energy to say something, and it comes out lopsided. He purses his lips and wishes he could take the words back. They sound wrong - too biting, too bitter.  
  
“The same, I guess,” Zhou Mi sighs. “You know, I’ve promised Calvin for a year that I’d make this trip. So… Yeah. I’m sorry. I know I should’ve flown to see you instead. But he’s one of my best friends too.”  
  
“I miss you,” Kyuhyun blurts out. He doesn’t even give a damn if anyone else in his room is awake and listening in. “And it makes me feel like hell because there isn’t anything I can do about it. I know I’m being unreasonable about this. I’m just a burden to you right now, aren’t I.”  
  
“You are not -”  
  
“And so I’ve been thinking that we should break up.” Before he can lose his nerve, Kyuhyun barrels on. “At least for now. At least until I get myself sorted out. I just… can’t deal with everything right now.”  
  
“Kui Xian,” Zhou Mi says carefully, “are you all right? You don’t sound like yourself. What’s going on?”  
  
Kyuhyun pushes his face into the pillow, swallowing thickly. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You don’t mean it, do you? Breaking up. What do you need, Kui Xian? I’ll get the next flight out and -”  
  
“No, I mean it,” Kyhuyun whispers pleadingly. He feels his heart break a little. “I really do. Let’s stop dating. Please, Mi.”  
  
“Not until you tell me why.”  
  
“Zhou Mi. I’m begging you.”  
  
Over the phone, Kyuhyun hears the whooshing of a door swinging shut and the static of background noise on Zhou Mi’s end suddenly quietens down. Kyuhyun wonders where Zhou Mi is now, what building or corridor or room he has just ducked into. He imagines Zhou Mi frowning at the walls, cradling the phone closer to his face.  
  
“Okay,” Zhou Mi finally exhales after a long pause, “let’s do that, if that’s what you want.”  
  
Kyuhyun’s body sags in relief. Zhou Mi doesn’t sound happy about it but that’s to be expected.  
  
“Thank you. And I’m sorry.”  
  
“But you’re going to be okay, right? Promise me you’ll take care of yourself. Please.”  
  
Tears blur his vision but Kyuhyun steadies his voice before promising Zhou Mi. It’s the least he can do. He’s choosing not to dwell on how shocked Zhou Mi must be right now, because it’s hard enough as it is to keep a lid on his own feelings.  
  
When they hang up, Kyuhyun turns his phone off and stares at the ceiling for a long time. He forces himself not to think about whether he did the right thing, but is unable to sleep all night.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a long time. I'm sorry ;__;

Still, the days go on.  
  
Stuck in the bubble of military life away from everything else, Kyuhyun finds it’s actually not difficult to leave his phone off for days at a time. Zhou Mi’s messages slowly start to peter off when it becomes clear Kyuhyun’s just ignoring anything he receives. Somehow, it buys him a little peace to cut himself off from the world. He just wishes his heart could be turned off just as easily.  
  
One day, he’s standing in line at the mess hall, blearily waiting his turn for breakfast when Lee Jaehwa, a sweet-faced fellow recruit, says casually, “you’ve been looking down, hyung. Girlfriend problems?”  
  
Some of the other guys look at him questioningly, drawing closer.  
  
And it’s just like Kyuhyun’s gone back a few years in time. The familiar fist of secrecy closes itself around his gut and he’s lost his appetite. Carefully, he schools his expression into one of wry exasperation and shrugs.  
  
“Well, what can I do, right?”  
  
The men don’t suspect anything. They sympathetically clap him on the back and move forward with the breakfast line.  
  
Kyuhyun wishes for a familiar face around him, for someone he knows he implicitly trusts. He’s travelled so many miles around the world before but this is perhaps the furthest from home he’s ever felt. There is nothing more routine and banal than this - the washed out grey of a military base in the muted hours of morning, the graceless clatter of cutlery and low conversations among tired soldiers, the weight of his fatigues enveloping his skin. Kyuhyun feels unmoored in this aimless, nameless sea.  
  
There’s nothing he longs for more than to hear Zhou Mi’s voice now. But Kyuhyun resists that impulse to pick up his phone. It wouldn’t be fair to Zhou Mi to have to deal with Kyuhyun’s mess of emotions after Kyuhyun has dumped him.  
  
He muddles through the days, somehow. Sometimes he can almost forget and throw himself into the rhythm of work, and other days he feels so overwhelmingly heavy and tired.  
  
In the end, it’s Changmin who calls him first, on a weekend morning when Kyuhyun is out of camp and at his parents’ home. Glancing at the caller ID on his phone, Kyuhyun pauses, cursing Changmin’s damned persistence, before he gives in and picks up.  
  
“So. Can you explain why Zhou Mi asked me to check in on you instead of doing it himself?”  
  
Kyuhyun winces. “Changmin.”  
  
He should’ve known this was coming. Changmin isn’t one to let things like this slide, especially since Kyuhyun’s been evading most of his texts for the past month or so as well, wanting to carve out as much solitude for himself as possible. Well. This is a conversation that Kyuhyun can’t escape, and so he opens the door to take a quick glance outside - his parents don’t seem to be home. Satisfied, Kyuhyun retreats into his room again.  
  
“What’s going on, Kyu?”  
  
“I broke up with him,” Kyuhyun sighs, settling down on his bed.  
  
Changmin utters a sound of disbelief. “Why? After all the time it’s taken you to get together?”  
  
“Sometimes things just don’t work out, you know?”  
  
“Don’t give me that,” Changmin says. “Have you forgotten how long we’ve known each other?” Kyuhyun slumps, resigned. “Zhou Mi sounded pretty worried about you. Hell, _I’m_ worried about you. It’s not like to disappear like this - what’s wrong, Kyuhyun?”  
  
There really isn’t any point in bullshitting. Changmin will just tear right through it, and Kyuhyun’s in no mood to have his weak attempts at evasion exposed once more. “I wanted to be alone. I’m not in a good place to be dating right now.”  
  
“Lots of soldiers date in the army. I’m sure you can work something -”  
  
“It’s not that. I… I’m not doing so good. I don’t know how it was for you but I don’t think I’m adjusting well at all.”  
  
“Kyu… Are you okay?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Changmin’s next words are careful, like he’s guiding his voice across eggshells. “Are you depressed?”  
  
Kyuhyun swallows, his mouth dry. It’s something he’s thought about - he even looked up medial websites to be sure - but he has a distinct feeling what he’s feeling is borne out of his circumstances rather than anything else. He isn’t good at dealing with change to begin with, and where Changmin saw his military service as a time to have a good rest and retreat from the public eye for a while, Kyuhyun doesn’t feel the same way. These two years are an unwanted interruption to so many new beginnings - he was at the doorstep of a new career, a new relationship, a new _life_ \- and he cannot extinguish that smouldering grudge in his heart.  
  
“I don’t think so. It’s not that serious, but I still feel like shit. Like there isn’t anything worth getting up for in the morning,” Kyuhyun finally says.  
  
Changmin hums thoughtfully. “Why’d you break up with Zhou Mi?”  
  
“I don’t want him to see me like this.”  
  
“Leave him before he leaves you, was that what you were thinking?” Changmin’s gone and stolen the words that Kyuhyun hasn’t dared to express, deftly uprooting them from the thick layer of insecurity lining his heart.  
  
“It’s not like that…”  
  
“Do you really think he’ll do that? Zhou Mi? Anyone with eyes can see how deeply he cares about you, Kyu. I thought you knew that.”  
  
“I…” Kyuhyun trails off and sighs. This isn’t a conversation he wants to have. He contemplates hanging up on Changmin but doesn’t. It won’t solve anything. “Changmin-ah, have you seen his career lately? It’s going phenomenally. He doesn’t have the time for this and I refuse to be that one thing slowing him down. I’d much rather leave before things get to that point.”  
  
“Why are you making that decision for Zhou Mi? Why are you doing this to yourself?”  
  
“You don’t get it,” Kyuhyun mutters. “Can we talk about this another day?” _Or never._  
  
He imagines that Changmin is glaring daggers into space now. Kyuhyun wonders if now would be a good time to hang up. But when Changmin speaks again, he doesn’t sound irritated or annoyed at all.  
  
“At first I thought maybe you were busy. I was busy too so I didn’t think too much about it but somehow it just didn’t feel right at all. I just had a really weird feeling that I couldn’t shake.”  
  
“I think that’s called paranoia.”  
  
“No,” Changmin says sharply. “It isn’t. It was a familiar feeling. I realised that Yunho was like that for a while, after the three of them left. He was angrier and drank a lot more, but it was the same. The withdrawal was the same. You know we weren’t talking much during that period, right? Because we lashed out at each other so much… I guess after a while it was hard to even look each other in the eye. But anyway. One night I came home late and I realised the apartment was empty. He wasn’t home.”  
  
Kyuhyun hasn’t heard this story before. Changmin’s voice is soft, and Kyuhyun suddenly feels bad for being snarky. He has a deep feeling this is a memory Changmin would prefer to stay buried. “Hey… You don’t have to tell me.”  
  
“No, I want to.” Changmin takes a breath and continues, “It was normal for him to stay out late but somehow I just had a strange feeling. But we’d just fought that morning and I didn’t want to talk to him still, so I went to bed. He wasn’t back when I woke up. I stayed home that day. I was so fucking worried but his phone was off and no one else seemed to know where he was. I was afraid to ask anyone for help. He only came back the next morning and by then I thought I was going to go crazy.”  
  
“Where was he?” Kyuhyun had heard about Yunho’s darkness, and his drinking, but Changmin had always been tight-lipped about what exactly had gone on during that hellish period.  
  
“He didn’t tell me. He came in and saw me, and looked so surprised. And it - I didn’t think about it then but looking back I realised- that it really hurt. But yeah. By then I wasn’t even angry at him anymore but he didn’t want to answer my questions. Just went to his room and locked himself in. He didn’t say a word to me but I stayed outside.” Changmin huffs a rueful laugh, “I actually fucking took my blanket and set up camp outside his door because I was so sick of us not talking to each other. Picture that.”  
  
“I never knew things got that bad,” Kyuhyun murmurs.  
  
“I talked at him through the door for a couple of hours. I don’t even know where I found so many words - it’s not like either of us had much going on for us then. I think at some point in time I wound up just reciting all the news I’d been reading the past few weeks. He only came out again at night. He looked like he’d cried, but I didn’t hear anything. He came out and stared at me sitting there and eventually he joined me on the floor. I asked him what happened and he…” Changmin sucks in a breath before releasing it slowly, “he’d actually spent all that time in some motel, alone. He drank so much that he actually got really, dangerously, sick at some point, but he was too scared to call for help. I wasn’t there for him. I could have lost him that day.”  
  
Changmin has placed a very private memory in his hands. It’s unexpected and Kyuhyun doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it. He covers his mouth even though there was no one else in the room to see him, tears starting in his eyes. Changmin sounds so much older all of a sudden. Has it really been so many years?  
  
“He got through it in the end. And you will too,” Changmin says firmly. “After everything he still managed to survive and make it home. To me. That was the moment I realised that we could pick ourselves up again.”  
  
“Things are not that bad for me -”  
  
“They aren’t,” Changmin agrees, and he continues gently, “and I know you’ll get better. Let us help you, Kyu. You don’t know how scared I was when you suddenly went off the grid like that.”  
  
“Sorry,” Kyuhyun mutters, feeling quite bad. “I didn’t know about what happened with Yunho.”  
  
“It’s okay. Just… Please don’t do that to yourself. Don’t put us through that either. You might think you’re doing Zhou Mi and me a favour but you’re not.”  
  
If Kyuhyun weren’t in his own home right now but in the army camp, he suspects that the constant knowledge of being in a shared space would help him keep a grip on his feelings. But he’s alone, and the room feels terribly big all of a sudden, his body aching to be held. He starts crying and tries to stifle it so that Changmin can’t hear. He knows it’s a lost cause.  
  
Changmin has never, ever been good at comforting people. He prefers to leave that job to people like Minho. Right now, he’s making abortive attempts to say soothing things and Kyuhyun would laugh if he could.  
  
Eventually, Kyuhyun gets his tears under control, wiping them off with the sleeve of his sweater. His face feels puffy and there’s a dull throbbing in his temples.  
  
“Sorry,” he whispers with an apologetic laugh.  
  
“You’re going to be okay, Kyuhyun.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Are you in camp?”  
  
“No. I’ve got the weekend off. I went home.”  
  
“That’s good.”  
  
There is the sound of a car pulling into the driveway, and Kyuhyun leans over to look out of the window. His parents are walking to the door with the groceries, chatting quietly about something or other.  
  
“Hey, I’ve got to go.”  
  
“I hope that didn’t scare you.”  
  
“No, it’s just that my parents are home.”  
  
“Ah. Help me say hi to them. And uh. Please talk to Zhou Mi or something? He’s been super worried.”  
  
“I will, eventually,” Kyuhyun promises. “I still might need a bit of time though. Can you help me talk to him first?”  
  
“Okay. Bye.”  
  
“Hey,” Kyuhyun interjects before Changmin hangs up, “thank you. For everything.”  
  
“Send me a bottle of wine and we’ll talk,” Changmin laughs.  
  
Kyuhyun lets the phone drop on his pillow. He takes a deep shuddering breath, and pushes himself off of the bed to go wash his face. Downstairs, there is the clatter of his mother unpacking her shopping and Kyuhyun leaves the tap on, losing himself in the mundane noises of home for a while. When he hears the dull, rhythmic thud of footsteps coming up the stairs, Kyuhyun glances in the mirror, satisfied that his face won’t give anything away. He messes up his hair a little for good measure.  
  
“Kyuhyunnie,” his mother says, knocking gently as she comes into the room with a glass of juice. “Are you awake?”  
  
“I just got up, mum,” Kyuhyun says.  
  
His mother places the glass on his dressing table, and Kyuhyun quietly moves to hug her, grinning a little as she startles.  
  
“Ah, what’s wrong?”  
  
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”  
  
Kyuhyun spends the weekend soaking up the quiet comforts of home - his mum’s cooking, the old songs playing from the stereo in his dad’s study. His parents don’t quite seem to pick up on anything; he comes home often enough for this trip not to seem out of the ordinary. Over dinner, his mother asks if he’s dating anyone and tries to suggest a blind date, but Kyuhyun just laughs and deflects the comment, letting it slide like water over a stone that has been polished over a long, long time.  
  
Lying in bed on Sunday night, his bag packed and ready by the door for his early return to camp the next morning, Kyuhyun clutches his phone in his hand for a long while, deliberating. Finally, he caves and visits a Zhou Mi fansite. Scrolling through the pictures of Zhou Mi on a recent radio show, it seems that he still looks the same, which gives Kyuhyun a measure of comfort. Surreptitiously, he traces the contours of Zhou Mi’s face in a photograph, yearning eating a hole into his chest with an intensity that is shocking because he’s been suppressing it for what feels like a long time.  
  
All this time has passed and they’re so far from the boys they were when Kyuhyun first fell in love. All this time, and still Zhou Mi is a huge part of everything Kyuhyun wants.  
  
_I love him, he thinks, I love him so much._  
  
When Kyuhyun returns to camp the next morning, it’s still dark outside as he steps through the gate. He feels better than he has in a long while. He isn’t ready to face Zhou Mi again just yet, but he feels ready to claw his way out of his miserable spell, even if it isn’t certain if he’s strong enough yet.


	11. Chapter 11

Another month passes and Kyuhyun finally finds himself in a hotel near Hongdae, pacing the thickly carpeted corridor, hands pushed into his jeans pockets as he repeatedly thumbs the rounded corner of his phone. Finding this place had involved awkwardly messaging Zhou Mi’s coworkers over Weibo and proving he wasn’t a stalker, before obtaining Zhou Mi’s manager’s number and having to prove to _her_ that he wasn’t a stalker too. Both conversations involved having to exercise his shaky command of Mandarin, and it was too much effort for him to just give up now.   
  
_Do it!_ His brain screams at him. Kyuhyun swallows, checking his phone one more time to make sure he got the right room number.   
  
Knuckles hovering an inch from the heavy wooden door, Kyuhyun stares blankly at it for what feels like a long while. This is possibly the most spontaneous thing he has ever done in his entire life, and Kyuhyun feels strangely terrified. Anyone coming down the corridor now will find Kyuhyun standing as though frozen outside a hotel room, with only the slightest tremor in his hand as a storm of hesitation rages in his mind.   
  
He’s been planning for this for weeks, ever since he found out through Zhou Mi’s fansite that he’d be in Seoul for a fanmeet on a weekend that Kyuhyun has off. He needs to fix this in person. There’s no other way about it. Kyuhyun doesn’t want to imagine a future without Zhou Mi in it. It is this thought that propels him out of his self-doubt to knock on the door.   
  
He counts six agonising seconds before Zhou Mi answers it looking flustered, his eyes wild and hair messy like he’d just woken up. When he finally sees Kyuhyun, his expression quickly shutters into caution and disbelief.  
  
“Kyuhyun?”  
  
“Hey,” Kyuhyun says, feeling a little dumbstruck by the reality of seeing Zhou Mi again. “Uh. Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”  
  
“How - why’re you here?”   
  
There is no unkindness in Zhou Mi’s words, but Kyuhyun still flinches back a little.   
  
Zhou Mi’s eyes widen. “Wait! No, that’s not what I meant. I was just confused.” He casts about for a moment, hesitating, before he reaches out and tangles his fingers in the sleeve of Kyuhyun’s sweater. “Come inside, will you? Let’s talk.”  
  
Kyuhyun allows himself to be pulled in, staring dumbly at the curve of Zhou Mi’s shoulders and the small dot of lint stuck on the back of his t-shirt. Zhou Mi releases his grip when they get to the middle of the room, sitting down on the bed and motioning towards the chair next to it.   
  
Kyuhyun takes a seat. He wasn’t expecting to be let in so easily.  
  
The sun is already setting and through the curtain, the faint pinpricks of light from the city can be seen. The bed is unmade and Zhou Mi is in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants. The hotel room isn’t on a very high floor, and the sound of rush hour traffic filters into the room through the window that’s been cracked open. Zhou Mi crosses his legs on the bed and looks at Kyuhyun expectantly, and Kyuhyun meets his eyes, mouth dry. It takes him a whole minute before he can form any words.  
  
“How… How have you been?”  
  
Zhou Mi’s lips quirk into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve been fine. But I don’t think you came here to ask me that, did you?”  
  
Kyuhyun ducks his head sheepishly. “I wanted to apologise to you. For everything I did. I shouldn’t have cut you off like that - Changmin said you were worried about me… I didn’t mean to make you worried. I’m sorry, I really am.”  
  
“Changmin told me you needed to sort some things out for yourself.”  
  
“I did. I still do.”  
  
Zhou Mi sucks in a breath and It looks like he wants to say something but he remains quiet. His eyes are still kind though, and so Kyuhyun doggedly carries on.  
  
“I missed you. I missed you every single second after I said I wanted to break up. At first I thought maybe I did it just because I was angry at you, even if I didn’t know for what exactly. But after a while I realised it was because I wasn’t in a good place then. I still don’t think I am, but it’s getting better at least. I didn’t want you to have to deal with me like that. You could tell, couldn’t you? I was so horrible and resentful, and I hated that you saw me like that, at my worst. I never meant for you to see that. You shouldn’t have to. I’m so sorry.”  
  
When had he looked away from Zhou Mi? Kyuhyun realises that he’s staring at his own tightly clasped hands, and they are white-knuckled and trembling. He unclenches them but cannot bring himself to look back up again. Now that the words have left his mouth Kyuhyun can’t think of anything more to say, and he feels like all the air has been deflated from his body.  
  
“Oh, Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi murmurs, “why didn’t you say anything?”  
  
“How could I have said it? It sounds so stupid.”  
  
“No, it’s not. It’s not stupid at all. I didn’t know you were having such a difficult time. Kyuhyun… I’m not going to stop caring about you just because of _this_. I’m here and I’m not leaving. Okay?”  
  
It takes a while for Zhou Mi’s words to fully sink in. Kyuhyun blinks slowly. In that span of time Zhou Mi has moved to crouch by him, and Kyuhyun’s frozen hands are cradled in Zhou Mi’s larger ones. The warmth seeping into his fingers feels amazing and Kyuhyun tentatively squeezes Zhou Mi’s hands back.  
  
“Please listen to me. You weren’t the only one who had drifted away… I know I wasn’t always there for you. You shouldn’t apologise. But thank you for coming to find me. Kyuhyun. I mean it. I’m always going to be here for you. I _want_ to.” Zhou Mi sounds so sure, but also terribly sad. “You need to believe me.”  
  
Kyuhyun swallows back a pang and nods, hunching low into into himself until it feels like his chin could touch his chest. He wants to hide the tears that he knows will come, but at the same time it feels futile. Zhou Mi probably knows. He always does.  
  
“Okay,” Kyuhyun finally whispers. He takes a deep breath to get his feelings under control, and meets Zhou Mi’s eyes. “Okay.”  
  
Zhou Mi smiles a little, but his eyes still look troubled. He gets up from the floor, tugging at Kyuhyun to follow. Hesitantly, Kyuhyun joins him to sit on the bed, still keeping a bit of distance between them. It takes a while for Kyuhyun to feel calm again, but Zhou Mi waits it out with him.   
  
“Sometimes I feel really inadequate. You deserve only the best. I can’t give you that,” Kyuhyun finally admits.   
  
The words elicit a small frown from Zhou Mi and he edges closer. Their knees bump together and Kyuhyun holds his breath for a second.  
  
“Is this okay?” Zhou Mi asks, noticing his tension and letting go. Kyuhyun pauses before nodding. It’s just like Zhou Mi to push through all the barriers that Kyuhyun sets up around himself, and when has Kyuhyun been able to resist? Zhou Mi looks like he’s mulling through what to say, and Kyuhyun reaches out so that their hands are touching again.   
  
“D’you know something,” Zhou Mi finally says, “I’ll always want to be with you, Kui Xian. At your best, at your worst - it doesn’t change anything. As long as I’m with you, I’m happy.  Is that difficult to believe?”  
  
“Yeah,” Kyuhyun blurts out, a small sigh leaving his lips. Zhou Mi’s words are sweet but they don’t make sense to him at all.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I can be pretty awful sometimes. I honestly don’t know why you stick around so much. There are better people out there who are dying to date you.”  
  
“You’ve seen me when I was a moping miserable mess too. Remember? After Yunkang left, you stayed with me the whole time I was getting over things. It wasn’t like I was nice to be around _then_.”  
  
“That’s different. You know it is.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Zhou Mi concedes, but he presses on. “What I was trying to say is that you’ve been there for me all those years that things weren’t going well for me. Why won’t you believe that I want to be here for you too?”  
  
“Yes, but,” Kyuhyun blusters. His ears feel warm. He’s probably blushing an embarrassing lot now, “I was kind of like really fucking in love with you all those times. Even if you didn’t know. Of course I stuck around. Also, I would’ve been a horrible friend not to have done that.”  
  
A slow smile creeps across Zhou Mi’s face, and Kyuhyun has to avert his gaze because Zhou Mi’s looking at him through those stupidly beautiful eyelashes of his, and how is Kyuhyun supposed to deal -   
  
“Kui Xian.” Zhou Mi gently cups Kyuhyun’s face in his hands. “In case you haven’t noticed, I care a lot about you too. Always have, always will.”  
  
“I… I know that,” Kyuhyun concedes.  
  
“You’re so silly sometimes,” Zhou Mi says, affection thick in his voice.  
  
Kyuhyun closes his eyes, trying to fight his involuntary response. Zhou Mi notices, and thumbs the corners of his lips.   
  
“Hey, give me a smile. I feel like I haven’t seen you smiling in a while.”   
  
Instead, Kyuhyun reaches out to grab one of Zhou Mi’s hands. “You’re amazing. Do you know that?”  
  
“Yeah, people tell me that quite often,” Zhou Mi grins, staring at Kyuhyun with the same fondness in his eyes. “Do you have the weekend off?”  
  
“Yeah.” Kyuhyun’s stomach growls really loudly all of a sudden, and he pulls away with an embarrassed grimace. “Are you up for dinner? Let me make it up to you.”  
  
They wind up going to a small udon place that Zhou Mi has a soft spot for. It’s more than an hour past the dinner crowd, and there aren’t many customers left in the shop. The soft, constant chatter of a radio show hovers in the background and the some of the waitstaff are sitting at a table in the corner, presumably catching a break before the supper crowd comes in. It’s the kind of place where the table tops have been discoloured from wear and the pages of the menus have softened edges, and where they are seated on brightly coloured plastic stools and served massive bowls of steaming noodles. Somehow, it makes Kyuhyun think of their rookie days, back when someplace like this would have been a post-rehearsal treat and he would probably have inhaled the food with an enthusiasm borne of deep hunger and adrenaline-masked exhaustion.   
  
This sense of familiarity comforts Kyuhyun, and it almost feels like they’re back in the past again, when he would sneak out with Zhou Mi at night for a snack. Somehow he realises he misses this friendship. He’s always had it, even when he’d been lovesick for the man he thought he could never have, even in the heady, unsure days of their open flirtation with each other… Even before all of that, when he was still a boy trapped in a hospital bed recovering from an impossibly broken body, Zhou Mi had slipped into his room and tentatively set down a modest bouquet of bright flowers one afternoon, before staying to hold his hand for hours despite the fact that they were hardly close at that time. Even at that time, even before he had even entertained the thought that Zhou Mi was someone he could call up for comfort or just for a meal, he still had that spark of friendship. Kyuhyun had been in so much pain then that there wasn’t much anyone could do for him at all, but there were occasional moments where the overwhelming agony lifted just a little and those were moments that he was - still is - very grateful for.   
  
The memory still makes a slow ache rise in his throat and Kyuhyun blinks twice to centre himself, wiping his mouth before methodically folding the napkin and placing it by his bowl. Zhou Mi looks at him questioningly and Kyuhyun shakes his head and smiles. He picks up the last gyoza with his chopsticks and places it in Zhou Mi’s dish. Zhou Mi accepts it, and his knees knock against Kyuhyun’s under the table.  
  
It’s raining when they try to leave the restaurant. They stand, shoulders pressed together, under the eaves as they wait for their cab to come. Kyuhyun doesn’t know how he should conclude this night. He knows he’s repaired things with Zhou Mi but at the same time it would be a stretch to think they’ve jumped right into where their relationship left off previously. Things just don’t fix themselves that way.  
  
“Will you come back to the hotel with me?” The cab pulls up by the side of the road and Zhou Mi tentatively touches Kyuhyun’s elbow. “Please. You’ve come all this way…”  
  
Kyuhyun nods and pulls on Zhou Mi’s sleeve to hurry him out of the rain. If his hand slips to hold Zhou Mi’s just as he’s opening the door of the vehicle, neither of them mention it.   
  
That night, they fall asleep together, not quite as lovers but certainly as _something_. After the night has become so quiet that Kyuhyun can notice the ticking of the clock, and Zhou Mi’s breathing has evened out into the peaceful rhythm of sleep, Kyuhyun curls up on his side facing him and burrows just a little closer. He eventually drifts asleep that way, the scent of Zhou Mi in his lungs, the steady weight of safety settling around his heart.   
  


\--

  
Roused by the rustling of a page, Kyuhyun wakes up to Zhou Mi sitting beside him on the bed, reading through a stack of papers - scripts? - under the soft light of the bedside lamp. Kyuhyun squints blurrily, scrabbling for his phone. 5.30AM.   
  
“What time’s your flight,” he mumbles.  
  
“Around eight. I need to check out in half an hour,” Zhou Mi replies, setting the papers down and smiling softly at him. “Did you sleep well?”  
  
Kyuhyun nods. Zhou Mi’s wearing a pair of thick-framed glasses and there are dark circles under his eyes. The bed is warm and Kyuhyun wants to pull Zhou Mi down into it again and kiss him, but that would be too much. He just shifts a little closer, hesitating before he lays his hand on Zhou Mi’s knee.   
  
There is a knock on the door, and Kyuhyun startles, retracting his hand back again.   
  
Zhou Mi doesn’t seem surprised though - he unfolds himself gracefully from the bed, striding to the door and cracking it open. Kyuhyun follows his movements through the haze of sleepiness. Zhou Mi’s talking to somebody - Kyuhyun recognises the voice, it’s his manager - and then she leaves and he closes the door again. The smell of coffee fills the room. Breakfast.  
  
Between them they share the food, steeped in the peace of the dim room. Zhou Mi pushes the cup of coffee at Kyuhyun, and the soft smile curling at the corner of his lips is almost too much for him to bear. He wants many things but it’s not up to him to ask for them, not at this point in time.   
  
They still haven’t talked about it, the question of whether they’re still in a relationship. Kyuhyun doesn’t know if they can go back to the way things were before. They still love each other - he knows this, they both know this, but that might not be all that matters.  
  
Still, Kyuhyun doesn’t push the issue. He isn’t sure what answer he wants to hear.  
  
The time comes for Zhou Mi to leave, and he envelops Kyuhyun in a tight hug that doesn’t last long enough. When he lets go, Kyuhyun starts forward a little as though he could chase the fleeting embrace for just a moment longer. Zhou Mi’s looking down at him, his lips slightly parted, his eyes hesitant. His hands slip from Kyuhyun’s waist to hang limply by his side, and that’s when Kyuhyun knows.  
  
“Can we…” Zhou Mi clears his throat and tries again more firmly. “Let’s just keep things this way for now.”  
  
Kyuhyun isn’t terribly surprised, but he’s not going to deny the slight pang of disappointment he feels.   
  
“You aren’t the only one who needs more time. I think I do too.”  
  
“I understand,” Kyuhyun says, trying to smile a little. “I think it’s the sensible thing for us to do.”  
  
“Let’s go back to the way things were, okay? Let’s still be friends. And… Maybe we can talk about this again when you’re done with the army?”  
  
“Yeah. Let’s do that.” Kyuhyun takes a deep breath and lets it out, before he meets Zhou Mi’s gaze properly. He holds out his arms, hoping he doesn’t look too petulant. It’ll be a while before they see each other again. “Just… One more for the road?”  
  
Zhou Mi nods and gently grips his shoulders, pulling him into his arms once more. It lasts longer this time, and Zhou Mi cups the back of Kyuhyun’s head with a warm, protective hand, his fingers soothing through his hair. His tenderness shatters Kyuhyun’s heart and mends it over and over again. “You know you can always call me, right?”  
  
Kyuhyun nods, breathing in Zhou Mi’s familiar scent. If he imagines hard enough, he can pretend his lungs fill up with courage. _I love you_ , he mouths against Zhou Mi’s throat, but they both know the words don’t need to be said aloud.  
  
And then Zhou Mi lets go, and then he’s gone.   
  
Kyuhyun watches the door close behind him. He stays for another twenty minutes - it’s just enough time for Zhou Mi to have checked out and left, taking the paparazzi with him, but not enough for housekeeping to show up yet. Zhou Mi didn’t even have to ask. The hotel room feels sterile and vacant again. Outside, it is no longer completely dark but the world is still quiet, on the brink of a new day.   
  
Eventually, Kyuhyun leaves too, stepping into the faint morning. The loneliness is a familiar one, as is the sadness. The only difference is that he actually feels strong enough to face them. This too, is another beginning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a lot of wrangling to finally get Kyuhyun to this point... Silly boy.


End file.
